The Athletic, now owned by The New York Times Company, collects detailed data about your sports interests. Which teams you follow, what articles you read, and your regional sports preferences create profiles valuable to sports betting, merchandise, and event advertisers. Under NYT ownership, this data integrates with NYT's broader data practices and cross-product profiling.
| Data Type | Collected | Shared | Sold |
|---|---|---|---|
| Team and league preferences | Yes | Advertisers | Ad Targeting |
| Article reading history | Yes | NYT Ecosystem | No |
| Podcast listening data | Yes | Internal | No |
| Geographic/regional interests | Yes | Local Advertisers | Unclear |
| Device and app usage | Yes | Analytics | No |
| Cross-NYT product activity | Yes | NYT Internal | No |
Under NYT ownership, The Athletic's data practices align with NYT's broader privacy policy. Your sports reading may combine with NYT News, Games, and Cooking activity for comprehensive profiling.
Sports interest data is highly valuable to betting companies. Your team loyalties, game tracking, and reading patterns help sportsbooks target potential customers.
Following specific teams reveals your location, potentially your income (based on market size), and creates opportunities for geographically targeted advertising.
Listening patterns, podcast episode completion rates, and audio engagement add another dimension to your sports interest profile.
Regional coverage means local advertisers can target fans of specific teams—ticket resellers, sports bars, merchandise shops get access to your data.
The subscription model means no display ads during your reading experience, though data collection for targeting still occurs.
Access to NYT's privacy settings and controls, including options to limit some personalization and advertising tracking.
Sports content is generally less politically sensitive than news, reducing some of the most concerning profiling risks associated with news subscriptions.