The New York Times sports publisher The Athletic partnered with the sports streaming service Fubo on Tuesday, the latest in a series of integrated partnerships spearheaded by The Athletic since it debuted advertising on its website two years ago.
The multiyear tie-up will first see Fubo integrated into live game blogs, with future plans for further placements in preview articles, newsletters, and product sections of the site. Both parties declined to provide commercial details of the deal.
“As the sports ecosystem continues to evolve, one of the main pain points for fans is finding where to stream a specific game,” said Sebastian Tomich, chief commercial officer of The Athletic. “We think this partnership helps us solve that.”
The partnership, which has been in the works for nearly a year, comes at a pivotal juncture for both parties.
In August, Fubo won a preliminary injunction blocking the launch of Venu, a multichannel video programming distributor created by Disney, Fox Corp., and Warner Bros. Discovery. The ongoing litigation is the latest in a series of strategic skirmishes playing out across the sports streaming landscape as it rapidly transforms.
For The New York Times, the deal brings a blue-chip sponsor into its portfolio just as the publisher prepares to cover the divisive presidential election, which has prompted some brands to consider pausing their spending on news sites over brand safety concerns.
Part of The Times’ rationale for acquiring The Athletic for $550 million in January 2022 was that it diversified the media company beyond pure news content, mitigating the effect of potential slowdowns in other categories.
Details of the partnership
The primary goal of the partnership is to funnel readers of The Athletic looking to stream sports programming toward Fubo, where they can then subscribe to one of its several tiers.
Fubo has rights for nearly all major sporting events, according to Fubo’s executive vice president of marketing, Yale Wang, making it a convenient one-stop subscription for sports fans looking to avoid the logistical hassles of finding programming in a fragmented landscape.
“One of the values of Fubo has always been our ability to aggregate across multiple different providers of content and make it seamless for folks to watch,” Wang said. “So it’s kind of a no-brainer to partner with The Athletic.”
Continuing The Athletic’s partnership strategy
The Athletic’s previous lack of advertising offered the publisher a blank-slate opportunity to selectively bring in partners that organically integrated into its content offerings, according to Tomich.
Since the publisher began bringing aboard sponsors, it has penned partnerships with eBay to power its collectibles business, BetMGM to power its sports gambling offerings, and StubHub to power its ticketing business.
The strategy entails understanding what pain points The Athletic’s audience might have in their consumption experience and then partnering with providers to ease them.
Fragmentation has bedeviled the sports landscape for the last several years, so striking an arrangement with a streaming partner has long been a goal for The Athletic, according to Tomich. In the future, the publisher might soon look to solve similar consumer frictions by partnering with a fantasy sports platform or local sports provider.
“The user experience is incredibly important for us,” Tomich said. “We want to have exclusive relationships where we can build integrated products together.”