Just two years since its launch, The Athletic now covers professional and college sports in eleven cities. Last week, the subscription based sports site announced its expansion into Dallas, Cincinnati and New York.
The Athletic will debut in its three new markets on February 12th and they’re bringing a host of local newspaper writers with them. Six writers for New York, five in Dallas and four in Cincinnati were announced.
“We will wait every local paper out and let them continuously bleed until we are the last ones standing,” Alex Mather, a co-founder of The Athletic, said in fall interview with The New York Times. “We will suck them dry of their best talent at every moment. We will make business extremely difficult for them.”
Marc Carig, a former Yankee and Met beat reporter for Newsday wrote about his decision to join The Athletic, a platform that offers him flexibility to write stories he wants to produce. “Putting ink to newsprint takes time. A lot of time. The trickle-down effect for beat writers is putting forth a lot of effort on things the reader can’t see,” Carig wrote.
“The Athletic checked all the boxes for me in terms of what I wanted to do,” Bob Sturm, formerly of the Dallas Morning News, told the Dallas Observer on Thursday. “There are a lot of likeminded people at The Athletic writing stuff that seems counter to the current form of sports media.”
After beginning 2017 with only two regional sites, Chicago and Toronto, The Athletic will now be in eleven cities following their expansion to New York, Dallas and Cincinnati. Other main locations for The Athletic include, Cleveland, Minnesota, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and the Bay area. The growing sports website also offers coverage in St. Louis, Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa, Vancouver and Winnipeg.
The decision to enter large markets such as New York proves The Athletic’s willingness to compete with established platforms. New York, Dallas, Philadelphia and others are not cities that lack sports coverage, with multiple newspapers and radio stations in each.
Currently, an annual subscription plan to The Athletic, which provides access to all markets, costs $47.99 for the first year and $59.99 each year after. A subscription on a per month basis costs $7.99.
Brandon Contes is a freelance writer for BSM. He can be found on Twitter @BrandonContes. To reach him by email click here.