New York Times to purchase The Athletic for $550 million
The New York Times Company has agreed to acquire the sports-subscription site The Athletic for $550 million.
The Times, which announced the deal Thursday after the markets closed, said the sale is expected to close during the first quarter of the year.
There is a bit of irony that an upstart sports media company is being bought by one of the world's largest legacy media companies. Alex Mather, a co-founder of The Athletic said during a 2017 interview with the Times that, We will wait every local paper out and let them continuously bleed until we are the last ones standing. We will suck them dry of their best talent at every moment. We will make business extremely difficult for them.
The Athletic had 1.2 million subscribers as of December and gets the Times closer to its goal of having at least 10 million digital subscribers by 2025. The company currently has over 8 million paid subscriptions, with that total doubling over the past three years.
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