The New York Times has agreed to acquire subscription sports website The Athletic for $550m.

Meredith Kopit Levien, CEO of The New York Times Company, commented: “Acquiring The Athletic puts us in a position to be a global leader in sports journalism and offer English speakers around the world another reason to turn to the Times Company to meet their daily news and life needs.

“With one of the largest dedicated teams of reporters covering sports globally and a commitment to everyday reporting, The Athletic is a great complement to The Times.”

The Times has c.8 million paid subscriptions across digital and print products.

“Strategically, we believe this acquisition will accelerate our ability to scale and deepen subscriber relationships,” Levin added. “We are now in pursuit of a goal meaningfully larger than 10 million subscriptions and believe The Athletic will enable us to expand our addressable market of potential subscribers.”

In Association with

The Athletic was founded in January 2016 by Alex Mather and Adam Hansmann, with the goal of providing smarter sports coverage for devoted fans through a subscription model. As of December 2021, the site had grown to 1.2 million subscribers.

Prior to founding The Athletic, Mather and Hansmann worked together at Strava,a the fitness tracking app. They will stay on after the acquisition.

The Athletic has c.450 full-time writers, editors and producers, and subscribers have access to over 1,000 new stories and 150 podcast episodes published every week. The company is based in San Francisco and is the fifth largest English-language digital journalism provider by subscribers.

The Athletic had operating losses of c.$55m in 2021 on $65m in revenue. The New York Times doesn’t expect the site to turn a profit until 2025.