
As ESPN Falters, The Athletic Chases Fans Tired of ‘Old Fluff’ - adventured
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-24/the-athletic-a-subscription-site-for-local-sports-news-raises-5-8-million
======
thedarkginger
This was mentioned briefly in the article on the backdrop of how the major
players are running away from text -- but as some context -- this really has
been a bleak summer for sportswriting.

ESPN started by laying off ~100 employees, with the biggest cuts coming to
writers in their declining coverage of baseball and hockey.

Fox Sports, who is trying to become the Pepsi to ESPN's Coke, then followed by
laying off every writer on staff in their "pivot to video" (go to their home
page now, and you will not find a single link to a text piece).

Vice Sports then joined the party last week by closing shop as part of Vice's
expansion into international markets at the cost of getting rid of their
sports editorial team.

Not sports directly but MTV did the same thing with their writing staff,
including a lot of their high profile writers like Holly Anderson.

With all of these being part of the magical "pivot to video," you have to
think it's mainly driven by optimistic hopes that video CPMs will rise in a
way that display ads have not for publishers over the last 10 years.

~~~
gedrap
A lot of news consumption is driven by Facebook, and Facebook is pushing
videos rather aggressively lately. It's very likely that these are related.

~~~
owebmaster
Yep, I perceived this too and I think they are going straight to Google's
mouth if Facebook thinks it will replace YouTube.

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zebrafish
Seems like a refreshing idea. Sports analysis pieces like those on
smartfootball.com are some of my favorite articles to read in sports.

ESPN's constant focus on TMZ-like coverage for sports has put a bad taste in
my mouth. I don't care about the picture Lebron posted of his breakfast on
Instagram. I don't really even care about the breaking news. Finding out about
a trade a day later rather than the minute it happens has absolutely zero
impact on my life.

I want highlights from the games I couldn't see, I want some analysis from
experts or insiders, and that's about it. Keeping it to just a few articles a
day I think will be better for sports journalism in the long run. No need to
manufacture content to fill the gaps in a 24-hour day.

~~~
mcgrath_sh
I have replaced ESPN with podcasts, individual national writers, SB Nation,
local beat writers, the teams and leagues themsevles, and official highlights
from YouTube. All of this is really easy with RSS. I rarely go to ESPN anymore
except for a couple of national NBA writers.

~~~
bluedino
Twitter is _perfect_ for sports. I can see why they picked up some NFL games.
You can choose what kind of content you want by who you follow, and it's all
real-time and interactive.

~~~
mcgrath_sh
I am _convinced_ I love twitter as much as I do because I use it to do nothing
but talk about sports. Twitter is incredible for sports and I talk to people
from multiple countries and states about various teams. It is incredible.

~~~
Touche
Unfortunately it's hard to follow more than 1 topic on Twitter. I follow a lot
of people who talk about technology and a lot of people who talk about sports.
But since I follow more people who talk about technology I hardly see much of
the sports stuff at all. Twitter has a way of surfacing only the primary
interest that you have.

~~~
bluedino
It would be nice if you could make 'feeds' or 'groups' or something. I can't
believe they don't have that feature.

~~~
Touche
It does have lists, but it doesn't give you the nice "while you were away"
groupings like you get in your main feeds.

~~~
dtien
True, though I find I don't need that 'while you were away' concept with my
Lists because it's filtered to exactly the people I want to hear from. Which
means, I don't get as much ( if any ) fluff in Tweets that you would get from
your more generic main feed.

In which case, I actually just scroll through chronologically and read through
what the news/insights/commentary has been since the last time I was there.

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sjs382
The Pittsburgh market has
[https://DKPittsburghSports.com](https://DKPittsburghSports.com) too, which
just celebrated their 3rd birthday. (Only affiliation is that I'm a happy
subscriber)

And someone from the Boston market just partnered with them to start
[https://www.BostonSportsJournal.com](https://www.BostonSportsJournal.com)

~~~
mcgrath_sh
If I was a betting individual, DK Sports would be in the top 5 bets of things
I would _never_ see on Hacker News! Ha!

I actually subscribe to the Post-Gazette for my local sports news. I think Ed
Bouchette (despite some of his flaws) is quite a solid beatwriter. Sadly, they
pulled Dave Molinari from the Pens beat. This also allows me to get local and
national news from a newspaper, so it is a win-win for me. I'd encourage
others to do the same, especially if you have good reporters on the local
sports beat.

~~~
sjs382
One of the major reasons DK interests me (other than just being good in
itself) is that it's sports-only. I don't live in Pittsburgh anymore but still
follow all of the teams. Having DK allows me to get the local sports media
without being bothered by things like local politics, news, etc.

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Analemma_
Is this going to work? Grantland was doing everything right, by the standards
of people who demand more substantive sports journalism: they had talented
writers, well-researched longform articles, and no clickbait. They still went
under. I’m rooting for these guys, but despite what people claim, I don’t know
if the market is there.

~~~
rgreasons
To be fair, Grantland was an ESPN subsidiary. I believe this model can be a
success, but the definition of "success" for The Athletic and for ESPN are
probably very different.

~~~
rhizome
Yes, if anything Grantland was only the latest example of how bad
sharecropping is for the tenant.

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praneshp
I hate ESPN. They bought the leading cricket website, cricinfo[0] a few years
ago, and the site has been redesign after redesign since then. Also the
typical "lets make videos not articles" stance, reducing articles from top
writers. Their latest redesign led to a lot of lost _data_ which pissed of
many loyal readers.

[0]: www.espncricinfo.com

[1]:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Cricket/comments/6otgno/fuck_espn_f...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Cricket/comments/6otgno/fuck_espn_fuck_cricinfo/)

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tcbawo
Has anyone successfully connected sports journalism with the Patreon model?
Advertising in a world of infinite choice seems like a losing proposition.
People have tried subscriptions in the past, but it seems people hesitate to
pay for a bundle of coverage (ie. cable television model), especially if they
are paying for content they don't use.

~~~
thedarkginger
Would like to hear any success stories for media (and speciifcally sports
media). I've been running a sports blog for 5+ years and don't use Patreon but
have seen many friends start that effort in the last year.

To be honest, I don't think I have ever seen anyone making more than $200 or
so a month (which is probably better than if they were CPM only but not enough
for a real sportswriter to pay much more than their internet bill
unfortunately).

~~~
LynxInLA
Nate Duncan and Danny Leroux cover the NBA, and they seem to make decent money
with podcast advertising. They recently started trying Patreon a few months
ago and have 750 people donating monthly. I'm interested to see how much that
grows.
[https://www.patreon.com/DuncanLeroux](https://www.patreon.com/DuncanLeroux)

------
MilnerRoute
This discussion is missing Vox's SB Nation sites, which grew out of an Oakland
A's blog (and a partnership with the Berkeley political blogger who started
DailyKos.com). They use local writers to provide coverage of local teams, and
their content is free to readers. (Plus there's always lots of comments to
read discussing the news of the day.) Eventually the articles also get
syndicated to Yahoo, CBS, Comcast, etc.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SB_Nation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SB_Nation)

Honestly, that may be what's killing sportswriting -- at least on the big TV
network sites. The networks don't have the resources to compete with 30
different web sites -- one for each MLB team, each with its own staff and with
their own distinct fan communities. The web makes it possible for each one of
these sites to narrowcast.

And then why do you _need_ ESPN?

~~~
trowawee
I mean, you need somebody like ESPN (or Deadspin), because there's actual
journalism to be done relating to sports. Off the top of my head, some areas
sports-related topics that would never have been covered by SBNation-style
sites include major sports leagues' problematic relationships to the military
and local governments, the stadium swindles perpetrated by teams, the NFL's
coverup of concussion research, and the monstrous scam that is the NCAA fall
into the category of "deserving of real journalism". I follow a bunch of
SBNation sites, but sites that specifically identify as "for fans of such-and-
such a team", and that rely on unpaid volunteer writers (which a lot of
SBNation absolutely does) can't be relied on to cover a lot of these topics.

------
bkjelden
Sounds like a really promising business model. I know hardcore NCAA football
fans will pay way more than that for access to recruiting news. I'd consider
subscribing once they cover teams I follow.

Hopefully a VC 'growth above all else' mindset doesn't force them to expand
beyond a profitable enthusiast niche.

~~~
carlmungz
I think, on a local level at least, this kind of model is the way to go for
most hard-pressed local and regional news outfits.

~~~
mcgrath_sh
Local newspapers and local talk radio still dominate local sports. Typically,
the best-connected reporters are those for the local paper. Sports coverage is
actually what drives me to subscribe to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

------
rebelwebmaster
I've been a subscriber for about 2 months now and so far have been exceedingly
happy with their level of coverage. Substantially better than what any of the
other major sites are offering right now (especially as a hockey fan where
coverage can be...lacking...at times).

~~~
slantyyz
>> (especially as a hockey fan where coverage can be...lacking...at times).

Have you tried the Canadian sports news sites? Hockey is definitely the most
covered sport here.

~~~
Huhty
TSN and Sportsnet both cover hockey really well, google them. And not just the
NHL, the minor leagues too. It helps that hockey is basically a religion in
Canada.

------
0x445442
I'm curious why writers don't approach this like app developers burning the
midnight oil pushing their own content for micro payments until they have
enough subscribers to go it alone. It seems like a similar dynamic.

Maybe I'm way off here but I trust individual journalists much more than
individual journalists under a corporate master.

For example, I'd gladly pay Glen Greenwald 49 cents/mo or 5 dollars/yr
whatever for exclusive (not edited by corporate masters) content from him.

I know things like news letters exist but the only ones I've ever seen are
talking about aliens or stock picks.

------
wesd
How does this trend affect new websites such as the Bill Simmions
theRinger.com? He has invested heavily on long form writing.

------
PKop
I’m not sure how what is presented is much different (or better?) than local
sports coverage already present in these cities?

I can go on Cleveland.com (the plain dealer website) and find quality coverage
of Cleveland sports for free.

~~~
adventured
Their bet is that they can out-compete existing local sports coverage by
focusing narrowly just on sports. Cleveland.com is a comprehensive news
source. Local news is continuing to die as a business, it's only going to get
worse for them. The Athletic also doesn't use advertising, so it starts off by
default with a significant product-experience advantage.

Narrow almost always wins in a situation like this. Traditional local news has
everything to lose, while they simultaneously flail about in a death-spasm as
their business model continues to melt out from under them.

The Athletic will be able to leverage one profitable market to kill the local
sports coverage in another market they want to enter. Scale it up to a couple
dozen markets, and they'll have the ability to easily enter any new market
they choose and take down the local competition by a dozen different means (eg
poaching writing talent en masse). If I were them, as I build up profitable
locations, I'd then intentionally run at a loss in new markets and hammer the
local competitors (who mostly don't have other markets to lean on). It's an
extraordinarily easy business line to follow on how to vanquish existing local
sports coverage.

~~~
PKop
My assumption was that the local established writers / reporters have an
inside track on information and relationships with teams, and for example will
attend (almost?) every game, pre-season, press conferences, have a presence in
the locker rooms etc etc.

But your point makes sense that as a business, the local media has the
disadvantage of using resources in other areas of "news", vs. focusing
exclusively on sports.

So, "targeting" these cities would have to include recruiting these people
already working there. Otherwise, initially I would always be able to get up
to date and "inside" information from the established sources.

I'm just thinking out loud, but essentially, this all depends on what the
meaning of "focusing on" means, as the local sports media individuals are
certainly _focused_ on their local teams.

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dbalbright
Speaking of puff pieces..

