Shortly after the Trump administration’s successful efforts to lobby FIFA to reinstate USMNT star Folarin Balogun over Fourth of July weekend, The Athletic published a scoop on the ruling.
Longtime reporters Adam Crafton and Dan Sheldon broke the news of Balogun’s reinstatement hours before the U.S. faced Belgium in the Round of 16, a story that would come to define the country’s run in the World Cup.
By the end of the week, it had also become the most-read news article in The Athletic’s history.
The North American World Cup is a watershed moment in sports history and therefore a massive opportunity for the New York Times Co.-owned sports outlet, which aspires to own an even larger share of the online sports reporting and content landscape than it has since its launch a decade ago. Meetings aimed at making the most of this summer’s tournament began shortly after the Qatar World Cup in late 2022 and moved forward in earnest last spring. The company’s coverage, which involves as many as 70 reporters and editors in addition to several hosts and producers for video content, combines its New York and London-based newsrooms in what international Editor-In-Chief Laura Williamson called “the biggest thing we’ve ever done.”
The World Cup has also demonstrated the many changes at The Athletic since it was purchased by the NYT Co. four years ago. Beyond written coverage, the outlet has churned out updates from its live desk, published vertical video game recaps and explainer pieces from credentialed reporters at games, and even developed a pick ’em game and bracket forecast. On the digital side, it is making a daily show for Amazon Fire TV, producing five separate podcasts, and streaming watchalongs starring Jon Mackenzie of “Tifo Football” fame.
The tournament has forced significant collaboration between the outlet’s American and global newsrooms. While the New York office has overseen international coverage of Formula 1, tennis, and the Olympics in recent years, the World Cup is a different animal. Williamson said the two groups have worked to speak to both more casual American fans and soccer diehards. The global newsroom, she said, has brought American reporters into its fast-paced news-breaking workflow, while American voices have addressed the domestic stories surrounding the tournament.
Though the company chose to remove its paywall for all World Cup coverage this summer, it was more prepared to monetize the work this year, too. Counting the Amazon partnership and other highly visible activations from eBay and Google, the company had 25 sponsorship partners for World Cup coverage, according to CCO Sebastian Tomich. For Qatar 2022, he said, that number was in the single digits.
“This has really been a story of how much The Athletic has changed and matured since the last World Cup,” Tomich said.
At the Cannes Lions festival last month, NYT Co. CEO Meredith Kopit-Levien said The Athletic had the fastest-growing audience in the company’s portfolio, claiming the sports outlet had multiplied the around 1 million-reader audience it inherited when it bought The Athletic.
The seven highest-audience weeks in The Athletic’s history have come in 2026, according to a spokesperson. During the first four weeks of this year’s World Cup, the audience was up 40 percent compared with the first four weeks of the Qatar tournament.
.@TheAthletic “has the fastest growing audience” in the @nytimes portfolio, CEO Meredith Kopit Levien says at #AxiosHouse at Cannes: pic.twitter.com/4byKiv2xep
— Axios (@axios) June 22, 2026
The Athletic understandably is operating confidently. It boasts having the “biggest newsroom in sports,” perhaps a dig toward the so-called Worldwide Leader in Bristol, and has ambitions for every sports fan in the world to download The Athletic app.
Early signs of further innovation are also clear at this World Cup. Mackenzie’s watchalong streams, a growing priority for the company, have regularly drawn five-figure audiences after the company eclipsed 100,000 views for the UEFA Champions League final in May. The company, Tomich said, is rapidly adding personal touches to its live coverage, including displaying the number of participants in reader chats and the journalist host’s name, and promoting live blogs in an app user’s “Saved” page.
“The concept of live in all of its forms … is always something that’s very interesting to us,” he said. “Because as a company, we’re very unique in sports media in our relationship to journalists and talent. And live is a place where you can get a competitive edge by having talent.”
The Athletic hopes to be even more expansive in its business and reporting reach by 2030, when Spain, Portugal and Morocco host the World Cup. As competitors cut back on sports coverage, The Athletic can leverage its scale as part of the NYT Co. at a time when sports are increasingly becoming intertwined with global capital and nations’ geopolitical interests.
By scaling up its live and video content, developing stronger relationships among its journalists across the globe, and giving audiences a free bite of The Athletic, the World Cup has been a successful test of much of what the outlet wants to be, said Janis Huang, VP of product and strategy.
“In the grand scheme of our ambition, I feel like we are still early,” she said. “We believe every sports fan should have The Athletic app and use us every day, and that we are essential and comprehensive enough to meet that sports fan need.”
About Brendon Kleen
Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.