The Athletic Reportedly Lost $55 Million In 2021, Continues To Be A Money-Burning Machine

• The Athletic burns through money at an unprecedented rate.
• The company has now suffered operating losses of well over $100 million over the last three years.
• Be sure to check out more sports stories at BroBible here.

The Athletic is bleeding, and not just slightly bleeding, it’s been gushing millions upon millions of dollars for years now.

According to the New York Times, The Athletic took a $55 million operating

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The operating losses were reported by the Times, which is interesting given the fact the Times purchased The Athletic in January of this year essentially giving the company a lifeline.

The New York Times has reached 9 million subscribers since purchasing The Athletic, which is a large number. However, the newspaper certainly can’t be too excited about the company it recently purchased losing an average of $50 million each of the last three years.

Given that the Times has only owned The Athletic for less than half a year at this point, it’s not completely clear what the plans are for the future.

With the operating losses The Athletic has suffered, one of the obvious fixes is to cut staff, forget about city-by-city coverage, and essentially turn into a smaller national website only keeping aboard the most-read writers.

We also can’t ignore the very simple idea, and reality, of there being so many subscription services out there. Some people aren’t willing to pay month-to-month for sports articles when there is already so much great sports content on the internet that costs absolutely nothing.

If Netflix is losing subscribers at an unprecedented rate, odds are people aren’t willing to spend a few bucks a month to read sports articles.

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