The Athletic was founded by Alex Mather and Adam Hansmann, former coworkers at subscription-based fitness company
Strava, with the mission of producing "smarter coverage for die-hard fans." The company was built as an alternative to the struggling ad-supported models.
The Athletic relies on
subscription revenue, not
advertising revenue, to support the business. Mather and Hansmann believed sports fans would be willing to pay for good reporting and writing, a clean app and no ads. At the time, a few newspapers were trying out
paywalls, but the common industry view was that information on the internet needed to be free. the site originally launched in Chicago in January 2016, 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.
Expansion In October 2016,
The Athletic expanded to a second city,
Toronto, to focus on
Maple Leafs,
Raptors, and
Blue Jays coverage.
The Athletic hired James Mirtle as editor-in-chief for Toronto. Mirtle had spent over a decade as a sportswriter at
The Globe and Mail before joining
The Athletic. A third city, Cleveland, launched in March 2017, with Jason Lloyd as editor-in-chief.
The Athletic continued city expansion to
Detroit in June 2017 with the hiring of
Craig Custance from ESPN as editor-in-chief. In August 2017, the site launched in the
San Francisco-area market with long-time
San Jose Mercury News writers
Tim Kawakami as editor-in-chief and Marcus Thompson as columnist.
The Athletic also added national coverage with new writers including baseball veteran
Ken Rosenthal, shortly after
Fox Sports eliminated its entire writing staff, as well as college basketball standout
Seth Davis and college football institution
Stewart Mandel. Mandel led the launch of the national college football section, "The All-American", at the end of August.
The Athletic expanded into
Philadelphia,
Minnesota,
Pittsburgh,
St. Louis, and the rest of
Canada in September 2017 bringing local coverage to 15 US and Canadian pro sports markets. The vast majority of expansion was aimed at expanding coverage to underserved hockey fans. In February 2018,
The Athletic announced further expansion into three new cities—
New York,
Dallas, and
Cincinnati—and launched baseball-only coverage in
Houston,
Los Angeles,
San Diego,
Arizona, and
Kansas City. The site also introduced expanded national MLB coverage with the addition of
Jayson Stark,
Jim Bowden, Eno Sarris, and editor Emma Span. The site announced full coverage in
Denver and
Boston starting in April 2018. In Denver,
The Athletic hired several reporters from
The Denver Post. In Boston, the initial staff consisted of beat writers previously employed at
The Boston Globe, the
Boston Herald, and the Springfield
Republican web portal
MassLive. Adding to college football coverage,
The Athletic added dedicated beat writers for major programs like
Alabama,
Georgia, and
Tennessee. In May 2018, the site announced coverage of both domestic and international soccer. In June 2018,
The Athletic increased coverage in Los Angeles and expanded into
Buffalo, New York, by hiring several reporters who had been bought out from
The Buffalo News the same month.
The Athletic continued market expansion in July 2018 with the addition of
Atlanta with former
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution writers David O'Brien and Jeff Schultz,
Baltimore, and
Wisconsin. The site also added 19 college football writers to cover most of the major
NCAA football programs. In August 2018,
The Athletic launched Fantasy Sports coverage and continued expansion across US markets including
Washington, D.C.,
Carolina,
Nashville,
Indiana,
Miami, and
New Orleans. The site also announced expanded NBA reporting with
Shams Charania and NFL coverage with
Jay Glazer.
The Athletic completed local coverage expansion to all
NHL and
NFL teams by September 2018 after adding writers in
Jacksonville,
Houston,
Oklahoma,
Oregon, and
Las Vegas.
Memphis was added as the 47th local market covered by
The Athletic in October 2018, expanding coverage to all NBA teams.
The Athletic signed three veteran TV journalists in November 2018, including
60 Minutes correspondent
Armen Keteyian, in the publication's efforts to produce more video content as a supplement to written coverage. In May 2019,
The Athletic announced an expansion into
motorsports coverage featuring veteran journalist
Jeff Gluck. While
NASCAR is the dominant focus of coverage,
The Athletic aims to be a destination for all motorsports fans by including other major events, such as the
Indianapolis 500. In August 2019,
The Athletic expanded to the
United Kingdom, predominantly covering domestic and international
football. The team was initially led by managing director
Ed Malyon and editor-in-chief
Alex Kay-Jelski. As part of this expansion,
The Athletic acquired UK-based football YouTube channel Tifo Football in April 2020 and podcast production company Muddy Knees Media in June 2020, although Tifo Football has largely retained its own brand identity, and is now known as
Tifo Football by The Athletic. In April 2024, Laura Williamson was announced as the editor-in-chief for UK and Europe. Their stable of writers, includes:
Michael Cox and Oliver Kay… David Ornstein and
Daniel Taylor.
Sale to The New York Times Company The company began exploring a sale to a larger media company in 2021, following continued unprofitability, driven by high expenses and reliance on venture capital funding instead of operational revenue. As of that time, the site had 1.2 million subscribers and $80 million in revenue, having raised $55 million in venture capital funding.
Axios entered discussions with
The Athletic in March of that year but ultimately declined to make an offer.
The New York Times was the leading contender for a potential acquisition as of May, with
Vox Media also expressing interest. Buyout talks between
The Athletic and
The New York Times ended in June 2021. On November 2, 2021, reports emerged that
sports betting companies
DraftKings and
Flutter Entertainment were among the bidders for the company. In January 2022,
the New York Times Company announced that it would acquire
The Athletic for $550 million, in a transaction expected to close in the first quarter of 2022. The
Times noted that
The Athletic newsroom would continue to run independently of the
Times, and co-founders Alex Mather and Adam Hansmann would stay on after the acquisition under David Perpich, who was appointed as publisher. In June 2023,
The Athletic underwent a reorganization, cutting 4% of its staff, reassigning 20 journalists, and discontinuing the use of team-specific beat reporters. The following month,
The New York Times announced that it would shut down its own sports department in favor of distributing content from
The Athletic and its reporters via its platforms. Existing
New York Times sports reporters were reassigned to other departments. The decision was criticized by the
New York Times Guild, which alleged the paper was engaging in
union busting by "outsourc[ing] union jobs on our sports desk to a non-union Times subsidiary under the preposterous argument that
The Times can 'subcontract' its sports coverage to itself." In May 2024,
The Athletic website was migrated from
theathletic.com to
nytimes.com/athletic. The New York Times Company reported that
The Athletic was profitable for the first time in its history in the third quarter of 2024. At the end of 2024, the company reported that 5.83 million subscribers had access to
The Athletic, either directly or through a bundle subscription, the last time this metric was publicly reported. In the second quarter of 2025,
The Athletic recorded revenue of $54.0 million and a profit of $5.8 million, its fourth consecutive profitable quarter. Starting with the third quarter of 2025, The New York Times Company no longer breaks out
The Athletic financial data in its quarterly reports. == Funding ==