The first I heard of The Athletic was when it signed up Jack Pitt-Brooke, my favourite football writer, and put him behind a paywall. I soon learned The Athletic is a sports media site. It does long-form stories, analyses and podcasts. Its MO has been to go around the US, and then the UK, hoovering up the best sportswriters in each city. It charges subscribers €9 per month. The Athletic was founded by technology people, not sportspeople. The founders had previously worked at Strava, the sports tracking app. They went to the startup academy Y Combinator, then raised a lot of money from venture capitalists,…

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