New York Times crosses 10 million subscribers threshold

The New York Times announced on Wednesday that it has achieved its goal of 10 million subscribers as a deal to acquire The Athletic closed.

The Times announced last month it had purchased the sports media outlet for $550 million in cash and would add its more than 1 million subscribers.

The Times had previously outlined its goal of reaching 10 million subscribers by 2025. It had almost 8.8 million subscriptions by the end of last year. Of those, almost 5.9 million were for digital news, over 2 million were for the other digital products like podcasts and newsletters and less than 1 million were for the print newspaper, the outlet reported on Wednesday. 

The Times also announced a new goal  of attracting 15 million total subscribers by 2027. 

“Our performance in 2021 demonstrated the power of our digital-first, subscription-first approach as we posted our second-best year ever for net subscription additions and strongest operating profit and adjusted operating profit in many years, which was a result of our consistent strategy and focus,” said Meredith Kopit Levien, CEO of The New York Times Company. “Since we launched our current strategy in 2015, we’ve been investing steadily into a once-in-a-generation opportunity to pioneer the development of a large and growing news and information market at a time when habits are up for grabs.” 

The Times last year announced it would pour more resources into podcasting, newsletters and other subscriber-based news services.

The company made headlines earlier this week when it purchased popular word puzzle game Wordle for a reported sum in the low seven figures.