New York Times-owned sports news site The Athletic lays off 4%

The Athletic is a YCombinator alum: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/the-athletic

$139M of funding, sold to the NYT for $550M a year and a half ago. Has never and still isn't turning a profit.

Previous discussions:

- "As ESPN Falters, The Athletic Chases Fans Tired of ‘Old Fluff’": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14838557

- "New York Times to Buy The Athletic for $550M": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29824730

Sports coverage even pre-LLM felt like it was written by basic AIs.

“[Game result], [high light], [reaction]” mad libs. Very little real value beyond scanning headlines.

Anecdotally most discussion happens live on social media and highlight reels on TikTok and Instagram. The rest is just adjacent like player gossip, or management moves.

Interesting and novel journalism happens maybe once a season.

I think the only way the economics really makes sense for professional sports writing is as a PR wing for an economic entity (e.g. NFL.com / ESPN.com or a gambling website).