Subscription sports website The Athletic has launched in the UK and claims to have “the biggest team of football journalists ever assembled,” including four-time sports journalist of the year Daniel Taylor and former Yorkshire Post chief football writer Phil Hay.
For the last few months, the website, which launched in the US three years ago, has been raiding national and regional titles for sports journalism talent.
The likes of David Ornstein, the BBC sport correspondent, and Hay announced their departures on social media but were not able to reveal they had joined The Athletic.
That changed today as the UK title officially launched, along with an extensive list of writers, and The Athletic UK Managing Director Ed Malyon, 29, declared he was now overseeing the “best sportswriting outlet on the planet without a shadow of a doubt”.
Former Daily Mail and Times sports editor Alex Kay-Jelski is editor in chief of The Athletic UK and notable appointments include: Manchester-based Taylor, who won acclaim for his coverage of football’s abuse scandal for The Guardian; Oliver Kay, chief football correspondent of The Times; Ornstein, sports correspondent at the BBC; George Caulkin, who covered North East football for The Times; Hay, the former Yorkshire Post chief football writer with more than 165k Twitter followers; and German football expert Raphael Honigstein.
In the US and Canada, The Athletic covers about 270 NFL, NHL, NBA and college sports teams. Last week it announced it had passed the 500,000 subscriber mark at an average annual fee of $64. It has raised over $90m from financiers such as Comcast Ventures, the media conglomerate’s investing arm, and hired about 450 journalists.
The start-up promises to do for sports journalism what Netflix has done for TV drama. The UK venture is backed by £10m and is aiming to attract more than 100,000 subscribers in the UK.The cost is £9.99 a month or £59.99 a year and a 50% discount is currently being offered.
