You Paid For A Business Magazine. Would You Pay For Sports News, Too?

The Athletic has more than half a million subscribers. If only it could turn a profit

- Ira Boudway

Alex Mather would like you to know that he loves newspapers. He’s loved them since he was a kid growing up in Philadelphia. “I waited for the smack of the Inquirer on the ground in the morning,” he says. “I would grab it, rip it apart, take the sports section, leave the rest for the family, and read it front to back.” Mather, co-founder and chief executive officer of the Athletic, a digital sports-news subscription service, delivers this paean to the sports pages in a June interview at the company’s San Francisco offices.

It’s a do-over, of sorts. Two years ago, while talking to the New York Times, Mather spoke less warmly about newspapers when describing his company’s ambition. “We will wait every local paper out and let them continuously bleed, until we are the last ones standing,” he said. “We will suck them dry of their best talent at every moment.” After the comments went viral, Mather apologized, writing that he was “not rooting for newspapers to fail” and had “learned a lesson in humility.” But the damage was done: The Athletic was just another tech-bro startup out to wreck livelihoods in the name of disruption.

“I’ll stay away from metaphors, for sure, for the rest of my career,” Mather says now.

“That’s good,” says Adam Hansmann, the Athletic’s co-founder and chief operating officer, who’s sitting across the table.