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Building The Athletic with Adam Hansmann

·55 min·3 clips

The 2019 Houston Astros sign-stealing story put The Athletic’s name next to coverage on CNN, Fox News, ESPN, and local TV.

1. Making Media speaks with Adam Hansmann about Building The Athletic with Adam Hansmann, focusing on subscription media and sports journalism. 2. Adam Hansmann is the co-founder of The Athletic, and the host frames him as a former Strava colleague whose company changed sports coverage economics. 3. The episode asks how The Athletic used a subscription model, local reporting, and data to build a business when paywalls were still contrarian in 2016. 4. Adam says he and his co-founder met at Strava, where nearly every employee was an endurance athlete and the culture was built around serving users. 5. He describes The Athletic’s launch strategy in Chicago as a test of unit economics, with a goal of reaching a few thousand paying subscribers in 2016. 6. Adam says the company did not raise a huge budget at the start, so user revenue and a tight feedback loop mattered from day one. 7. He explains that The Athletic aligned editorial staff with subscribers by keeping the feedback loop direct and by avoiding a business model built primarily for advertisers. 8. Adam says the founders were outsiders to media, with basically zero media experience, but relied on persistence and hiring experienced people. 9. He says that outsider status helped them avoid preset biases about what could or could not work in digital media. 10. Adam says the company became highly data driven, including direct access to audience metrics and subscriber metrics for reporters. 11. He says a team of content analysts mined those numbers to identify formats that worked in one sport or market and could be tried elsewhere. 12. Adam describes the transparency as a way to avoid turning journalism jobs into sales jobs, even though some staff refreshed metrics every five minutes and others avoided the numbers entirely. 13. He says The Athletic learned that great journalism was the silver bullet, and he points to the 2019 Houston Astros sign-stealing story as a major example. 14. Adam says that story appeared alongside The Athletic’s name on CNN, Fox News, ESPN, and local news, creating a wave of attention and signups. 15. He says the company still needed habitual daily reading, because occasional investigative hits alone would not sustain the business. 16. Adam explains that bundle economics emerged from data showing fans followed multiple teams, such as the Maple Leafs and Blackhawks, across markets. 17. He says the company later extended beyond Twitter into email, podcasts, live games, and free-access formats that reduced friction for new audiences. 18. Adam describes The Athletic’s product as a clean, fast reading experience with live audio rooms and a homepage meant to be a first read during breaking sports news. 19. The episode suits founders, media operators, and sports fans who want specific examples of subscription strategy and newsroom design. 20. The episode is less useful for listeners looking for celebrity gossip or a broad history of sports media.

As heard by us

A measured look at how The Athletic turned a clear audience gap into a durable subscription business.

The episode treats The Athletic as a practical answer to a real gap in the market. In 2016, paid sports coverage still felt like a gamble, and local reporting was thinning out.

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Why you'd press play

You want the founder story behind The Athletic and why paying for sports coverage felt contrarian in 2016.

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