Closely watched US subscription sports website The Athletic has established a foothold in Australia, in a sign of a possible push into the nation’s sports journalism market.
Documents filed with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission show The Athletic Media Company Australia was registered as a local entity in mid-January in South Yarra, Victoria.
The Athletic is known for its coverage of many sports including the NBA. Credit:ap
The directors of the local company include The Athletic’s US founder Alex Mather, chief legal officer David Ortenberg and local head of technology Mark Whelan. The Athletic is also actively recruiting for two Australian-based engineers with subscriber and sports betting expertise.
The Athletic, which specialises in video, news and analysis for sporting leagues such as the NBA, NFL and English Premier League, has been rapidly expanding since it started operating in 2016. The outlet surpassed 1 million subscribers in September and was last valued by private market investors at $US500 million ($655 million).
The sports news focused website was founded by Mr Mather and Adam Hansmann, both former employees of subscription fitness company Strava, in 2016. It provides news and updates about athletes and teams across a range of sports such as basketball, American football and soccer, at both the professional and college levels.
It has hired a number of high profile US sports journalists from outlets such as ESPN and Fox Sports and also expanded into the UK in its short, five-year history.
Since launch, it has raised nearly $US140 million over multiple funding rounds and is backed by investors such as Courtside Ventures, Evolution Media and Bedrock Capital. The company said last year it makes more than $US60 million in subscription revenue. Subscriptions typically cost $US10 per month or $US60 per year.
A spokesperson for The Athletic said the company had “no imminent plans” to launch local coverage but had set up a small engineering team based in Melbourne.
Any entry into the Australian market would come after one of the most difficult years for the local sports media industry. The suspension of matches and events due to the coronavirus pandemic led to job losses across the sector including a large cuts to Fox Sports and the NRL’s digital team. Newswire Australian Associated Press also reduced its sports coverage when it was bought by a group of investors and philanthropists.
The Athletic is one of two prominent international outlets to try to establish a presence in the local market this year. Pedestrian TV Group announced earlier this month it would launch a local version of prominent women’s lifestyle website, Refinery29, and would reinvest in a local arm of Vice.
If successful, The Athletic would join international websites like Guardian Australia and Daily Mail Australia, which have operated in Australia for years. However, unlike other international websites which have been generalist in nature, The Athletic specalises on sport, and its content sits behind a paywall.
Other major US outlets such as HuffPost Australia and BuzzFeed have struggled locally. BuzzFeed shut its Australian news division last year around the same time that 10Daily, a local lifestyle website owned by ViacomCBS, closed down. More recently HuffPost Australia, which scaled back its operations dramatically in 2017, has closed.
Zoe Samios is a media and telecommunications reporter at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
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US sports website The Athletic prepares for local launch - Sydney Morning Herald
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