ABSTRACT
The Athletic is a digital start-up that has been hugely disruptive for sports journalism. The Athletic has offered significant salaries to lure sports journalists away from legacy media and this has led to questions over what constitutes a legitimate news organisation. The Athletic has pursued an aggressive strategy that has involved positioning itself as the saviour of sports journalism. It has adopted a paywall business model that means it needs to obtain original stories that are worth paying for. As a result, The Athletic is reinterpreting sports journalism practice and attempting to offer depth and serious reporting to stand out from other media. The Athletic reverses the digital trajectory of sport journalism towards de-professionalisation, but it remains to be seen whether the business model can survive. Further, The Athletic’s own commercial imperative will continue to test its professional commitment to proper and worthy sports journalism.
