New York Times to acquire The Athletic for $550 Mn

The New York Times Co. is buying San Francisco-based sports news site The Athletic in an all-cash deal for $550 million.

The deal will help expand the New York Times' digital offerings as the 170-year-old paper zeroes in on its subscription-first business model that helped it weather steep declines in advertising and print readership.

Meredith Kopit Levien, the Chief Executive of the Times Company, called The Athletic a great complement to The Times. She said, “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 its most recent quarter, the Times had nearly 8.4 million and have been diversifying its coverage with lifestyle advice, games and recipes, helping it counter a withdrawal from the politics-driven news traffic boom.

Alex Mather and Adam Hansmann, Founders of The Athletic , said, “We started The Athletic to bring fans closer to the teams, players and leagues they love through deep, immersive journalism and storytelling. Today marks a thrilling milestone for that dream, one realized because of the hard work of every single one of our employees. We are proud to have The Athletic become part of the Times Company’s family of subscription products.”