The Athletic made a profit in the third quarter of 2024 for the first time since its launch, according to the latest financial results from parent publisher The New York Times Company.
NYT Co bought the loss-making sports news brand, which launched in 2016, for $550m in January 2022 and it has taken two-and-a-half years since then to get it into quarterly profit of $2.6m.
This is an improvement from a loss of $2.4m in Q2, of $8.7m in Q1, $4.4m in Q4 2023 and $7.9m in Q3 last year.
The publisher said the improvement was down to higher revenue in both subscriptions and advertising.
Revenue was up 30% year-on-year to $44.7m for the quarter, with subscriptions making up 70% of that total for The Athletic, advertising (which was up 7% to $9m due to growth in direct-sold display) comprising 10% and other revenue such as Apple licensing making up the rest.
On an investor call, New York Times president and chief executive Meredith Kopit Levien said The Athletic made progress on its “journey to become a household name among sports fans, with strong coverage of the Olympics and great momentum at the start of the NFL and English Premier League season.
“The Athletic is already an important component of our bundle offering and more deeply engaging subscribers,” she added, saying it has begun being tested as “more directly as a driver of bundle subscription starts”.
In Q3 the New York Times Company surpassed 11 million total subscribers for the first time, reaching 11.09 million with 260,000 net new digital subscribers, the company said.
The total subscribers include digital and print, and subscribers to single products as well as the bundle which includes The New York Times online, The Athletic, Cooking, Games and product review brand Wirecutter.
Some 46% of subscriptions (5.12 million) are bundles/multi-product and this was said to be on track to exceed 50% by the end of next year.
"That matters because bundle and multi-product subscribers have a higher expected lifetime value than subscribers to any individual product," Kopit Levien said.
She also said that "subscriber engagement, as measured by the share of subscribers visiting The Times each week, reached its highest point since 2020," leading to growth in average monthly revenue per user up from $9.28 a year ago to $9.45.
"And we once again grew direct relationships, even as the market continues to experience significant audience headwinds, driven by ships in the platform landscape," she added.
The New York Times Company overall grew adjusted operating profit by 16% to $104.2m compared to the same period last year, while revenue was up by 7% to $640.2m.
Subscription revenue increased 8% to $453.3m, with 71% of this coming from digital-only products. Advertising revenue was up 1% to $118.4m (with digital up 9% and print down 13%). Other revenue was up 9% to $68.5m primarily driven by increases in Wirecutter affiliate referral and licensing revenue.
The results also revealed the publisher spent $4.6m pre-tax on its copyright claim against Microsoft and OpenAI between July and September, up from $2m in Q2 and $1m in Q1.
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