The Athletic
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Type of site
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Sports journalism |
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| Available in | English, French (Montreal only) |
| Created by | Alex Mather and Adam Hansmann |
| Commercial | Yes |
| Registration | Required |
| Launched | January 2016 |
The Athletic is a subscription-based sports website covering professional and college teams in Chicago, Toronto, Cleveland, Detroit, Minnesota, Montreal, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and San Francisco. The site also covers national stories in football, basketball and hockey through a mix of long-form journalism, original reporting, and podcasts. Their business model is predicated on dis-aggregating the sports section of local newspapers and reaching non-local fans that are not reached by a local newspaper.
The Athletic was founded in 2016 by Alex Mather and Adam Hansmann, who both formerly worked at Strava. The site launched in Chicago, with Jon Greenberg serving as the founding editor, along with Sahadev Sharma (Cubs) and Scott Powers (Blackhawks). Greenberg and Powers previously worked at ESPN Chicago, while Sharma left Baseball Prospectus' Cubs vertical to join the website.
The first major funding was provided by Courtside Ventures, which provided $2.3 million in seed funding. The site launched in January 2016. The initial subscription fee was $10 per month, or $60 annually.
In 2017, subscription fees were lowered to $4.99 per month or $39.99 annually. Under that model, Mather and Hansmann reported that the company could turn a profit with 8,000 to 12,000 subscribers per city.
In July of 2017, the company raised another $5.8 million in funding and announced their expansion into the Philadelphia and San Francisco-area sports markets.
As of October 2017, The Athletic had a staff of 65 editorial employees.
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