The Athletic Lays Off 8 Percent of Staff

The Athletic, the sports journalism subscription website that became a bright spot for a beleaguered industry in recent years, said in a memo Friday that it is laying off 46 employees in its editorial and business departments, amounting to 8 percent of its staff.

It also imposed a staffwide pay cut of at least 10 percent for all employees.

“In order to ensure we can be a viable business for many seasons to come, we have to make decisions that won’t jeopardize our future,” said Taylor Patterson, a spokeswoman for The Athletic.

The Athletic launched its first local site in 2016, in Chicago, and quickly grew to cover nearly every major professional sports team in the United States, as well as dozens of professional soccer teams abroad. As tech giants like Facebook and Google have gobbled up most online advertising dollars and the news media has steadily contracted, The Athletic represents the hopes of many in the sportswriting industry that an alternative business model can be found.

The company makes the vast majority of its revenue through subscriptions, which usually cost $60 a year but are frequently discounted. The Athletic has nearly a million subscribers according to Patterson. That rapid growth has been fueled by nearly $140 million in venture capital funding, including $50 million raised earlier this year.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/05/sports/the-athletic-layoffs.html