This tech veteran is saving sports journalism

Remember when you could make a living as a reporter for a local newspaper? Alex Mather does.

Alex is the co-founder and CEO of The Athletic, a subscription-based sports website that provides ad-free national and local coverage of professional and college sports in 47 cities across North America. From basketball to soccer, this entrepreneur is changing the game (or rather, games).

We recently sat down with Alex to find out how he and co-founder Adam built The Athletic’s 100K subscriber base, and how they’re fixing the broken state of journalism. Here are just a few things we learned:

1. Alex wants to bring back old school local reporting, with a twist.

As a Philly native and Penn State grad, Alex relied heavily on The Philadelphia Inquirer for his sports fix, noting that it seemed like it would send “a dozen people to every Eagles game” for coverage. While he admired the Inquirer as a local paper, he grew frustrated with the lack of economic support for fresh, inventive reporters. “When it came time for the Inquirer to make cuts, the folks that I liked to read tended to get let go first. They were younger, and they were a little different in how they covered the team.”

When he and Adam launched The Athletic, they scouted a diverse range of sports reporters, from local news veterans to national reporters (ESPN’s Jon Greenberg was one of their first hires). Their goal? To “go deep on the Xs and Os of the game, and how the game was won.” The Athletic goes back to the roots of local reporting, but with deep analysis that elevates its work to the prestige you usually find in national publications.

2. The Athletic invests in its reporters.

The Athletic doesn’t believe in shortcuts. “We really invest in our editorial team. We bring them in, we give every single one of our writers equity in the company, they get world class benefits, we give them three months full, fully paid paternity and maternity leave,” said Alex. (We wish him the best of luck as he starts his own paternity leave very soon!)

Every writer has access to “writer therapy,” where they can take a deep dive on everything from their prose to their statistical analyses. On this uniquely curated environment, Alex remarked, “We treat them really, really well and we ask them for just one small thing…do the best work of your career.”

3. When setting its subscription price, The Athletic looked to Netflix.

In a world where everyone is accustomed to free content, how do you set a paywall that makes sense? The Athletic costs $60/year for an annual subscription and $10/month if you choose its month-to-month option. But how did it get there? Alex looked to the Netflix model.

“Whatever Netflix is charging, is sort of your barometer,” he said. “We’re not spending thirteen billion dollars a year on content, so we knew we had to be well below Netflix. We had a feel around the cost of a couple tickets to a game a year. That felt like a really fair price for what we’re doing.”

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Whether you’re a sports nut or a novice, you have to admire The Athletic’s commitment to quality. This piece is just the beginning, so be sure to check out Episode 51 of KindredCast featuring our interview with Alex Mather, embedded below or available on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.