Dules you need to get off your tweet posting style more often if your posts turn out like that

Great thread by the way

Ivansen wrote:

What's the pun? Did she have metaphorical fake tits?

No she had "real" fake tits.

A US Sports Website Has Gone On A Hiring Spree Of UK Journalists

The Times' chief sports correspondent Oliver Kay,
northern sports correspondent George Caulkin,
sports editor Alex Kay-Jelski

the Independent’s sports editor Ed Malyon.
the Guardian’s chief football writer Daniel Taylor
the BBC’s top football correspondent David Ornstein

Daily Mail, executive sports news editor Laura Williamson;
Midlands correspondent Laurie Whitwell;
Adam Crafton, recipient of the 2017 Young Sports Writer of the Year award from the Sports Journalists’ Association

There’s the Liverpool Echo’s James Pearce (covers Liverpool and has 478,000 followers);
the Yorkshire Post’s Phil Hay (covers Leeds United, 165,000 followers);
the Brighton Argus’s chief sports reporter Andy Naylor (covers Brighton, 18,000 followers);
the Express and Star’s Tim Spiers (covers Wolverhampton Wolves, 29,000 followers);
Goal.com’s Sam Lee (covers Manchester City, 53,000 followers);
ESPN’s Liam Twomey (covers Chelsea, 44,000 followers).

But there are others who are striking a more cautious tone.
One veteran who turned down the offer to join the US site told BuzzFeed News: “They have a big ball of money and they’re chucking it around now. It’ll only be great if in two years' time there aren’t a bunch of great football writers out of work.”

https://www.buzzfeed.com/amphtml/markdistefano/athletic-hiring-spree?

That's some really credible names they've got there, relatively speaking. The payment plan doesn't seem viable for me though, so if they're depending on that then it won't end well.

they always have promo codes for signup. i think i paid $40 for 1 year. thats less than $4 a month. across basketball and baseball alone, i read 2-3 articles a day. well worth it for me. not having to deal with ads or junk flash vids everywhere is more than worth it to me

Wow that's basically both Liverpool and Arsenal ITK gone there.

wonder if they'll still be on the same club beats. a large portion of their following is because they've been as the gold standard for inside knowledge of those clubs.

Quincy Abeyie wrote:

That's some really credible names they've got there, relatively speaking. The payment plan doesn't seem viable for me though, so if they're depending on that then it won't end well.

If it is good quality articles I think people will pay for it, last year they had for black Friday a $2.50 per month deal which isn't too bad.

I wonder if they'll have the same connections though - part of the appeal for clubs to leak directly to some of the ITKs was because they were writing for big news organisations with national coverage

Completely forgot about this thread. Great read even four years later

Ages like a fine wine.

For that price they need to have tons of articles, podcasts, exclusive celeb access to get me to subscribe. There are so many platforms with subscription options be it Vox, NY Times, The Times, Arseblog, etc. the industry needs to figure this payment model and price points.

Clrnc wrote:

Wow that's basically both Liverpool and Arsenal ITK gone there.

Ornsteins ITK credentials were done anyway. Good timing for him.

Yeah good time for him to move to that retirement league.

Mirth makes a good point too, who knows whether they'll get the same info from their sources now that they work for some obscure American platform

Claudius wrote:

For that price they need to have tons of articles, podcasts, exclusive celeb access to get me to subscribe. There are so many platforms with subscription options be it Vox, NY Times, The Times, Arseblog, etc. the industry needs to figure this payment model and price points.

if you are going to follow the NBA this season, i think its definitely worth it for that alone. the sixers writers normally have at least 5-6 pieces up per week, sometimes more, and they are almost always in depth. plus the national NBA coverage stuff, plus draft stuff. well worth it. i haven't even bothered looking into their footie stuff yet, but if they are bringing in respected journalists, i am sure the content will be worth it. $3-4 per month (and it is less when you get one of the promos which are always running) is well worth it, imo. like i noted above too, not having to see lots of ads and flash videos that autoplay is a HUGE benefit. its worth it financially just to not have to deal with that nonsense. i do think they are trying to start rolling out podcasts, i think shams has one now on the NBA stuff, obviously.

David Ornstein on 5 Live Sport.

Arsenal have never officially said it but is the understanding of BBC that, since they missed CL, it was in the 45mil budget range which the deals struck, so far, keep it below as payments are structured over a few years.
Pepe deal, for example, is £72m that will be structured over the 5 years of his contract.
It is important to note, however, that we might never know if the owners have invested anything now that the club is 100% owned.

Arsenal still have some work to close the Pepe deal but it looks like it will get done in the next 24-48 hours.
Napoli has/had a deal with Lille but that fell down because they couldn't agree with the agent.
Zaha not happening if this happens as Palace wanted way more money upfront than Lille so the Zaha deal is very tough on our budget.
Auba and Laca nor anyone else significant will depart to finance this deal.

Defensively, there is confidence with Holding coming back, Bellerin coming back and Saliba next season.
Celtic and Arsenal have agreed on the price for Tierney but need to agree with the structure of the deal as Celtic want more money upfront.

Arsenal transfers after this deal will be very limited as as this will take a significant chunk out of our £45m warchest and we will need to sell some players before we can buy.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00074p2
Forward to 1:17:30 (past all the nonsense)

45m "warchest"

mdgoonah41 wrote:

they always have promo codes for signup. i think i paid $40 for 1 year. thats less than $4 a month. across basketball and baseball alone, i read 2-3 articles a day. well worth it for me. not having to deal with ads or junk flash vids everywhere is more than worth it to me

fyi, for anyone who wants to subscribe to the athletic, if you use the code mlbtrade40 during signup through july 31 you get 40% off for the year. they have these types of promos a lot, just posting this one here because i just saw it recently, in case anyone is interested.

mdgoonah41 wrote:

mdgoonah41 wrote:

they always have promo codes for signup. i think i paid $40 for 1 year. thats less than $4 a month. across basketball and baseball alone, i read 2-3 articles a day. well worth it for me. not having to deal with ads or junk flash vids everywhere is more than worth it to me

fyi, for anyone who wants to subscribe to the athletic, if you use the code mlbtrade40 during signup through july 31 you get 40% off for the year. they have these types of promos a lot, just posting this one here because i just saw it recently, in case anyone is interested.

50% for August.

I signed up to it and I have to say the content really shows up the shite you get in mainstream media on a daily basis.

Though gunnerblogs letter to Kroenke was a bit cringe.

I'd be happy to mate, I'll even undercut the Athletic and charge just £1 a month from anyone who wants an article.

Just gone through this Athletic. Interesting articles and a helpful format. No wading through irrelevant content.

Biggest winner of this window: Lequipe. Broke the Pepe news way before others, Luiz news first and Coutinho although the latter was half true as we rejected him in the end.

Oracle is still the best out there as well

first month of athetlc is free. no brainer.

Coutinho would have made sense now that we have let Iwobi leave.

Clrnc wrote:

Biggest winner of this window: Lequipe. Broke the Pepe news way before others, Luiz news first and Coutinho although the latter was half true as we rejected him in the end.

Oracle is still the best out there as well

I think Orny retained his crown with a last minute K.O.

ornstein was sketchy this window, but breaking the news that the dybala deal was off was a fine send-off. saw that tweet pop onto my feed in real-time and immediately busted out laughing

So....has anyone subscribed to the Athletic for football news? How is it?

Haven't got it. Know a few people who did, they say its great if you also like US sports.

It's free for a month
https://theathletic.com

i subbed for a year with the 50% offer, but I'd definitely check out the trial if you're not sure. I generally have stopped bothering to read the sports pages of mainstream papers because of the quality of the content, so this fills a gap for me.

Mirth wrote:

So....has anyone subscribed to the Athletic for football news? How is it?

I went in and read an article on Liverpool and Klopp. Really well-written. Also the fact that I was able to go in and customize it so it only displays articles about Premier League, Arsenal, Lakers, Juve and Real. It’s a massive benefit to open a sports feed and daily email with no noise, just intriguing titles from guys like Michael Cox. They’re pushing their 50% special now

Claudius wrote:

Mirth wrote:

So....has anyone subscribed to the Athletic for football news? How is it?

I went in and read an article on Liverpool and Klopp. Really well-written. Also the fact that I was able to go in and customize it so it only displays articles about Premier League, Arsenal, Lakers, Juve and Real. It’s a massive benefit to open a sports feed and daily email with no noise, just intriguing titles from guys like Michael Cox. They’re pushing their 50% special now

the customization is actually the best feature of the site, imo. you pick the teams/leagues you want to follow, and that is what you see when you log in. you can still explore other stuff, but every day i am getting 5-6 articles about the teams i care about and i can read those first, and that is typically all i have time to read. works well.

its jarring going from the athletic back to something like espn, with tons of autoplay flash videos and ads all over the place.

if you are still on the fence, 50% off the athletic right now

theathletic.com/laborday50

i'll keep posting about it, because i really do hope it is the future of journalism. clickbait and annoying ads are awful and if journalism can move to a pure subscription model, i think its better for everyone.

The Athletic don't need astroturfers because their subscribers are doing it for free!

In all seriousness I felt kind of bad when reading the articles posted on here for free, but when I read what their higher-ups are saying I immediately feel much better.

"We will wait every local paper out and let them continuously bleed until we are the last ones standing. We will suck them dry of their best talent at every moment. We will make business extremely difficult for them."

Quincy Abeyie wrote:

The Athletic don't need astroturfers because their subscribers are doing it for free!

In all seriousness I felt kind of bad when reading the articles posted on here for free, but when I read what their higher-ups are saying I immediately feel much better.

"We will wait every local paper out and let them continuously bleed until we are the last ones standing. We will suck them dry of their best talent at every moment. We will make business extremely difficult for them."

to be fair, the guy who said that said it a few years ago and has apologized numerous times for the remark.

Pure MBA thinking. Equally brilliant and sad.

(I've got one of those)

An apology doesn't count for much when it's their business model does it? I'm not familiar with them but buying the best/most renowned journalists from the competition and then growing market share by burning money with implausibly cheap initial fees sounds suspiciously similar to the attrition model employed by investor bankrolled companies like Uber, Airbnb etc.