Unicorns and The Athletic
How The Athletic's business model clearly reflects the modern tech industry, and why it matters.
In his excellent newsletter that you absolutely should subscribe to, Dave Karpf recently wrote about Facebook and the economic models of the modern tech world:
The institutional structure of Silicon Valley is biased not just toward growth and profit (that’s all capitalism, everywhere), but specifically toward phenomenal growth, “disruption” and monopoly power. Venture capitalists aren’t interested in funding new companies that will provide a modest, positive return on investment. They invest in a hundred wild ideas, expecting ninety-eight of them to crash-and-burn, betting that the remaining two will attain unicorn status. Venture funds and angel investors only give seed funding to companies with the potential for astronomical growth – unicorn ambitions. And without support from these early investors, potential start-ups wither on the vine.
The culture of today’s tech industry is infused with this systemic bias – not just towards profit-making, but towards big money.
Reading that, I instantly thought of The Athletic.
Looking back, my skepticism and questions about The Athletic were never about the idea behind it, or by the work being done by the talented reporters and editors there. My skepticism was always focused on the hype that swirled around the site, the breathless reporting that this would change sports journalism as we know it (a lot of it from future-of-journalism types who rarely, if ever, think about sports journalism).
But all of the elements that Karpf described were present during The Athletic’s rise.
Phenomenal growth: You saw that in 2017-18, when the site seemingly overnight went from a few cities to having a presence in every major market in the U.S.
Disruption: You saw that in every “Why I Joined The Athletic” essay, where writers talked about how newspaper sports journalism was broken and that The Athletic was going to fix it by giving fans what they really wanted.
Monopoly power: You saw that in the now infamous quote from Alex Mather to The New York Times: “We will wait every local paper out and let them continuously bleed until we are the last ones standing. We will suck them dry of their best talent at every moment. We will make business extremely difficult for them.”
To paraphrase what Karpf writes about Facebook, there’s probably a business model in which The Athletic could work as a modest success, providing sports journalism for fans who want more than the cursory game coverage provided by the networks and deeper coverage than the dwindling staffs at a lot of daily newspapers can provide.
But that business model wouldn’t allow for a company to raise a reported $139.5 million in venture capital funding, and wouldn’t lead to a $550 million sale to the New York Times earlier this year.
It’s worth remembering in all of this that Mather and Adam Hunsmann, The Athletic’s founders, didn’t come from the journalism world. They previously worked at Strava, coming from the tech world that is driven by the search for unicorns and fast growth above everything else.
What I’ve been working on
Women Athletes Are Using Social Media to Make Change and Grow the Game in Global Sport Matters
Women athletes in the U.S., who have long been largely shut out from conventional, mainstream sports coverage, have successfully used the new media ecosystem to get around traditional gatekeepers, amplify their voices, and directly connect with the public. What’s more, they’re not reluctant to leverage their digital clout into offline power and influence.
Anything that allows me to talk to brilliant people like Dr. Marie Hardin, Dr. Molly Yanity and Lindsey D’Arcangelo is a fine way to spend my time. I’ve gotten some really nice feedback on this piece, which makes it even more rewarding.
The Other 51
My podcast about writing has been on hiatus for a while, what with the massive trip across the country and whatnot.
I’ve got some fun things planned for the fall, and I think you’ll dig the episodes coming. Subscribe to the podcast in your app of choice to get new episodes first.