Ahead of the game: How The Athletic keeps on winning by increasing the depth of its reporting
With the sports reporting space about as crowded as a football terrace these days, reaching supporters as a media brand is extremely tough. It’s a conundrum The Athletic – bought by the New York Times for $550 million in 2022 – has cracked by adding impressive depth to its coverage.
“How do we cut through when search headwinds as they are, and AI is producing synopses of everything else?” Laura Williamson, editor-in-chief of The Athletic, asked delegates at the FIPP World Media Congress, stressing the importance of having reporters on the ground generating exclusive content.
“If you’re the only one with that information, that’s how you can cut through. Because nobody can aggregate that, can they?
“That’s one of our key avenues for cutting through the noise and bluster. I know it’s the same in news and politics, but it really seems to affect sport.”
Before improving the depth of your sports reporting you need to understand exactly what depth is – and isn’t.
“Depth is not about thousands and thousands of words,” Williamson pointed. “When The Athletic launched, because it was hyper local in all different markets across the United States and Canada, we had a reputation for writing long, and that’s just not what we’re about.
“Depth is particularly important in sport because we’re looking at on-field drama. Everybody has an opinion. If you are a follower of Manchester United or a supporter of Tottenham, you know exactly what’s just happened. You’ve lived that experience.
“So, as sports journalists, what can we give you that’s extra? How can we go beyond the scoreline? How can we provide that greater depth and add to the conversation? How can we go deeper?”
Off the pitch, the challenge is even greater, said Williamson.
“If you’re not paying for TV rights or access, then how do you insert yourself in that really special relationship between a fan and their club or their team or what they’re watching, and how do you go deeper?
“How do you find out information that is not given to you on a plate and is not in a TV interview? That is the challenge, and that is what I challenge our reporters to do every single day: to try and be part of that really intense bond between a fan of any sport and the sport they’re watching, because, actually, in our slightly splintered society, live sport is one of the few areas where we’re having that shared lived experience.
“It’s our job as sports journalists to try and tell people things that go beyond the pitch, beyond the scoreline.”
Trust remains key
Depth is also very much about trust. When you go beneath the surface, how do people know that what they’re reading or watching is actually accurate?
“It’s our job to provide that extra layer of information, that extra layer of clarity, and engage directly with the supporters,” said Williamson. “And part of that depth is about being really transparent about our editorial standards. How have you got this information? How many sources have we spoken to? Have we been to both parties for right and reply?
“It’s so important that that we are transparent to that level to provide that level of depth.”
According to Williamson, The Athletic achieves this level of trust through “news, news, news”.
“It’s the biggest challenge in any journalism, never mind sports journalism to tell people things they don’t know about whatever it is they care about,” she said. “And news takes lots of different forms.
“I often think the best column writing, for example, tells you something you don’t know. It brings you a new perspective. Or in writing a game piece, I want somebody to bring some colour from a training ground or something they’ve seen or somebody they’ve spoken to. The same goes for our videos and podcasts. We have to keep pushing the boundaries and telling people things that they don’t know.”
World class coverage
If you expect people to pay for content, you need to show the lengths you have gone to as a media brand to get exclusive stories, Williamson added.
For instance, during its coverage of the 2026 Football World Cup, The Athletic divided its audience into three groups: interested, fascinated and obsessed.
An extensive international reporting team was deployed, covering every match live and combining reporting from stadiums with automated data, analysis and audience interaction.
Daily video briefings helped fans catch up on developments, with newsletters, interactive games and discussion boards encouraged fans to come back for more.
“I love the developments we’ve had in video recently, because it can show that I’ve got reporters all over the place,” Williamson said. “I’ve got people at training grounds, at games, having coffees with people, finding out information.
“I really want to convey that to our readers and our subscribers because that’s what they’ve earned.”
Picking the right format to reach out to sports fans, is also extremely important. “It might be a short video posted first on social media that then drives people back to the app or the website,” said Williamson.
“It might be a news story. It might be a longer feature, bringing lots of inside information, and I think that being ready to embrace different formats for different audiences is absolutely key.”
While The Athletic’s strategy does not eliminate the challenges posed by AI, it does show how investment in original reporting encourages audiences to engage with a publisher and its journalists directly.
“We wanted people to interact with our journalists and our coverage so introduced having a journalist in the discussion tab of a live blog so they can directly engage with readers and debate,” said Williamson.
“Sometimes it goes a bit south, but the reaction is quite phenomenal. Being able to talk to an expert directly, a real person who might be sitting in the stadium or has just been at the training ground, has been such a wonderful development for us.”
