The Athletic is setting its sights on one of the most popular sports in the world: Formula 1. The New York Times–owned subscription-based website is hiring a dedicated team to follow the international auto-racing sport and the multibillion industry surrounding it, further expanding the paper’s footprint in sports media.
In many ways, F1, one of the fastest growing sports globally, is a natural fit for The Athletic, which, per editor Steven Ginsberg, already has a “huge operation” across England and now in Spain covering European soccer. The world’s premiere auto-racing sport only recently found a foothold in the United States, thanks largely to the hit Netflix docuseries Drive to Survive. This year, the US will be the only country to hold three F1 races in one season, including one that’ll go right down the Las Vegas Strip. “It’s sort of a breakout moment for a sport that had already broken out. So it’s just good timing for us to be a part of it,” said Ginsberg, a Washington Post veteran who became The Athletic’s first executive editor earlier this year.
“The Netflix documentary definitely made a difference in people’s awareness and attention to it,” said Ginsberg, who said The Athletic’s F1 coverage will at once “obsess for the hard-core fans” and be “welcoming to those who are new to it.” The Athletic publisher David Perpich has previously pitched The Athletic’s global presence as a selling point for the Gray Lady’s international ambitions, which this venture into F1 coverage also fulfills.
The expansion into F1 is the first major move that Ginsberg has made since taking over the website. The Athletic has continuously lost money since its founding, and remains financially in the red at the Times, which acquired the site in a $550 million deal last year. As of February, the Times reported that The Athletic has lost roughly $36 million since coming under the paper’s management. Nevertheless, the site is hiring at a time when others in sports media are slashing staff: property-wide layoffs at Vox Media hit SB Nation hard in January, with some employees laid off and some sites cut altogether; Sports Illustrated laid off 17 staffers earlier this month; Warner Bros. Discovery Sports laid off dozens last year.
So far, The Athletic has made three new hires—managing editor Alex Davies, senior writer Luke Smith, and staff writer Madeline Coleman—to lead their coverage of the F1 competition, which this year plays out over a record-breaking 23 races, starting next month in Bahrain. Other locations on the 2023 calendar include Monaco, Brazil, Belgium, and Italy. “We’re going to travel the globe with the drivers and cover it where they are,” Ginsberg told me. “I mean, how great is that job?”
Charlotte Klein
Source link
