The Athletic keeps growing .......

No one knows whether The Athletic will be a huge success, not even the executives behind The Athletic.

The Athletic is getting its funding from venture capitalists. As with all of their investments, venture capitalists want to make their money back, and more, usually within three to five years. If the founders of The Athletic have correctly identified sports journalism as an underserved niche, and if it can distinguish its product well enough to convince readers to pay for it year after year, then the founders and the venture capitalists win. And so do the journalists working there. The risk: not enough readers want to keep renewing subscriptions, the revenues are not sufficient to justify the expenses evident in the hiring sprees in the US and UK, and the venture capitalists stop providing funding.

 

The irritating part of these subscriptions for The Athletic is that the renewal is automatic. They don't send you email telling you that your subscription is about to expire and asking if you want to renew. My first hint was the notification from my credit card app of the payment (at a much higher rate than the previous year). Had I known this was coming, I might have let it lapse so that I could get one of the reduced rates that are being offered on a fairly routine basis.

 

NOTE: This has nothing to do with The Athletic.

My credit-card number changed multiple times in 18 months due to data breaches. An auto-subscription recently ran out and cancelled itself because I hadn't updated the account. There was no notification sent, and the new rate is much higher. Customer service wouldn't adjust the account to what I had before. Thanks, but I can live without that subscription service -- and I'm now telling my friends who might use it about the poor customer relations.

All that bad will could have been resolved via an email saying, "Your subscription will expire on X date. Your credit card did not work. Please update your account by Z date to avoid discontinuing your subscripton." There were other auto-subscriptions who did that, and I just updated my number and went on my way.

 

So I see that The Athletic has its usual Monday announcement of another batch of writers and/or contributors. God bless. The new team announced today -- to cover media, legal and business issues -- sounds useful but, at least to me, unlikely to drive subscriptions. (Media writer Deitsch is very good but of course has been on board for a while.) Am I being cynical, or realistic? This sounds to me too much like mimicking the New York Times or WSJ.

 

I do think they're in danger of trying to be everything to everyone.

 

I sure hope they know what they're doing.

 

Seriously - why couldn't The Athletic just assume operations of SI? Cull the best of the contributions each week (or so) and put out the magazine.

 

Because Ross Levinsohn is running the show there, and who would want to work with him after what he did at tronc. Fuck that guy.

 

Because The Athletic is not a charity and nobody feels bad for SI