The Athletic launched last January as a series of subscription-based websites devoted to local sports.
Starting next month, the group is launching its first site devoted to national sports: a college football publication called The All-American. Overseen by veteran college football reporter Stewart Mandel, the site plans to launch Aug. 28 with three to four writers, plus a freelance budget.
A few months later, The Athletic will launch a college basketball site with Seth Davis that will be called The Fieldhouse.
The Athletic is trying to come up with a new business model around sports journalism — one based on subscription fees rather than advertising revenue. It has secured funding from companies such as venture capital firm Courtside Ventures and independent media holding company The Chernin Group.
Earlier this year, the company hired Paul Fichtenbaum, who used to manage Mandel and Davis at Sports Illustrated and helped recruit the two to come to the company. Fichtenbaum spent 27 years at Sports Illustrated, leaving last year as editor-in-chief. He joined The Athletic earlier this year.
Former USA Today sports editor Daniel Uthman also is joining The Athletic as a managing editor.
The sites will focus on the printed word and podcasts. They will have no videos — at least not initially. “Videos didn’t get the traffic that words did,” Davis said. “It’s the advertisers who want video.”
The sites also will try to convince people to pay for content. After an initial period where the sites’ content will be available for free, most eventually will move behind a paywall. Mandel and Davis both cited companies as diverse as Netflix and Spotify to show that consumers are paying for content on the Internet.
“This notion that people won’t pay for content is ridiculous,” Davis said. “If you give people quality content and a quality user experience, they’ll give you a couple of bucks a month.”
Similar to the local sites that have launched in Chicago, Cleveland, Toronto and Detroit, the Mandel and Davis sites will cost between $4 to $6 per month and will focus on a mixture of breaking news, analysis and long-form pieces.
Both Mandel and Davis will manage their sites, hire writers and write stories and columns. They moved to The Athletic when they were let go from their previous spots — Mandel from FoxSports.com and Davis from Sports Illustrated.
