The New York Times adds The Athletic to its all-access digital subscription

Good news for sports fans who subscribe to The New York Times is that its allaccess digital bundle adds The Athletic for free access. The newspaper brought the sports news site for $550 million in cold hard cash back in January this year. But it’s only recently that bundle subscribers are being offered the chance to hop The Athletic’s paywall. A slide deck presented to investors by The New York Times earlier this month announced the addition and shed light on what the Times hoped to gain by acquiring the five-year-old sports news site. The Times sees a highly attractive opportunity to cross-sell individual subscriptions and — crucially — add value to its bundle because of the ‘modest’ overlap between subscribers to the Times and the 1.26 million with a standalone Colorado new subscription to The Athletic.