So, after seeing quite a bit about the push they’re making in the UK by signing up all the news outlets top sports journos and also Arseblog now annoyingly selling out a bit and plugging them at every opportunity, I thought I’d have a look and see what it’s about.
I’d be sceptical about paying for any kind of news in the first instance, but they want, at normal prices £4.99 paid annually or £9.99 paid monthly.
Granted you can get the £4.99 half price currently but I don’t get who they’re targeting with their content, the cost of subscription isn’t far off what I pay for my amazon prime/netflix/spotify/now TV and they offer a hell of a lot more for my money!
I’ve unfollowed any of the writers they got because they were pushing The Athletic lol. Except Ornstein. The guys from Di Marzio/Sky Italia, especially Fabrizio Romano has seem to be a lot more reliable than English reporters anyway. Who often write more opinionated(?) pieces anyway.
I mean, before the internet, people spent more than £30 a year on newspapers. And i’d imagine many still do.
I guess we’re used to having things for free nowadays. But personally i’m OK with paying £2.50 a month for quality sports journalism. I’ve already signed up for the month free trial. I’m only a couple of days in but I think I’ll stick with it. What’s £2.50 a month? Half a pint, a few chocolate bars. It’s nothing really. Would people complain about it if it was in print format, like a magazine?
I signed up. The first month is free so depending on the quality of the content - I’ll decide whether to not it’s worth £9.99 a month.
I do value good quality sports journalism. I pay for The Blizzard, which is a quarterly subscription. I did used to pay £4 a month to The Guardian too and hopefully this is as good as the two of them - then it’ll be well worth the money.
It’s not all opinion though. There are a lot of big research pieces and interviews on there. And even so, I value the opinion of certain writers so that’s not a problem for me. And like I said, first year is £30/ £2.50 a month. I appreciate that might be a lot to some people, but I won’t miss it. I read a lot so it’ll be money well spent.
Well yeah, technically it’s not £2.50 a month. You pay £30 for the year, which works out at £2.50 a month.
I think people are much more inclined to want to sign up to subscription models. They know what they’re getting at a fixed price each month and there’s no surprises.
Eventually, everything will move in that direction. TV services are already there, even sports like Boxing, Wrestling (I know it’s not a sport in the same regard) and MMA all offer subscription services now. It’s no surprise that print media are moving in that direction too.
I get that people used to subscribe for news papers, I even still subscribe for a monthly mountain bike magazine myself, but football is such a huge entity it’s so easy to find readable content, I struggle to see how they can ask people to pay the prices they’re asking.
I may just sign up for the free trial see what it’s about but I get all my Arse related news via this place.
At the end of the day it’s not about what people want or prefer. It’s about companies running their business in a cost-effective way. Subscription services are not a result of customer demand, they are imposed on customers for a product that is in demand from them.
There is too much competition nowadays and with that, customer loyalty erodes. There’s too much choice and brand loyalty has dropped to all time lows. As a result, companies have to spend fortunes on reacquiring existing customers. Subscribers generate higher revenues than non-subscribers, so companies force the disloyal customers away from their products by trenching them in exclusivity. All due to the fact that the costs of acquiring disloyal customers exceed the gains.
