Hi, 3 charts for you today:
The New York Times has a new year's resolution — to get in shape.
It plans to do so by splashing $550m in cash on acquiring The Athletic, the sports media start-up founded back in 2016.
Pay to read about sports?
The idea that millions of people would be willing to pay $5 or even $10 a month for coverage of their favorite sports was a fairly wild one back in 2016. After all, there were already plenty of free opinions to read on the internet - particularly about sports. But, The Athletic didn't listen to any of that conventional wisdom, building a 1.2 million strong subscriber base in the last 6 years.
To get there The Athletic took a leaf out of the early Facebook growth model, targeting specific sports city by city. It first launched in Chicago in 2016, covering mostly baseball and ice hockey. Then it added Toronto, covering the 3 major teams there, using funding from early investors, before expanding further afield. Going deep in one local area, before branching out.
Subs, subs, subs
The Athletic has 550 million obvious reasons to take this deal, and from the NYTimes perspective this deal is a big step towards achieving the company's target of 10 million paid subscribers by 2025 and (obviously) strengthens their sports coverage. Those are both great, but the payoff for the NYTimes is likely to take at least a few years.
Apart from the obvious upfront payment, The Athletic is also still a pretty big money pit — spending roughly $120m on its operations last year, while only bringing in ~$65m in revenue. The NYTimes can't put its checkbook away just yet.
Myopia, or short-sightedness, is on the rise.
Data from the BHVI predicts that by 2050 almost half of the global population could be affected by Myopia — more than a doubling of the rate from the year 2000.
Has the pandemic made it worse?
With increased amounts of screen-time, it feels intuitive that our eyes might have been put under more strain in the last two years — and there's a decent amount of scientific evidence to back that up, as myopia has long been associated with spending more time indoors.
Although there haven't been any conclusive studies in adults since the pandemic, a study of children in Hong Kong from 2021 found that "the rate of nearsightedness that developed during the pandemic more than doubled what was found in a pre-pandemic study of children the same age". Good time to be a glasses maker.
Taco Bell vs. Chipotle
Fast Mexican (or Tex-Mex) food is a really hot market — and Chipotle Mexican Grill is slowly catching up to Taco Bell, the biggest Mexican-based fast food chain in the US. Last year Taco Bell's system-wide sales were flat year-on-year, Chipotle grew 7%.
Taco subscriptions
So it's interesting that this week Taco Bell announced its latest innovation to re-invigorate growth: the Taco Lover's Pass subscription, which gives you one taco a day for a whole month for $10.
The idea is that you might stop by Taco Bell for your free taco, and decide that actually you were hungry and thirsty after all, and end up adding to your order.
Taco Bell isn't the first restaurant to experiment with subscriptions. Panera has one for drinks, and Sweetgreen just launched a loyalty subscription for its salads.
So far the jury's out on whether these subscriptions actually work, or if they're more of a short-term gimmick, but Taco Bell did say that its test of the subscription in Arizona grew its rewards program by 20%. Tracking streaming subscriptions is already hard enough, so we're kind of hoping for our sake that this doesn't work out.
1) Ford is doubling its planned production of its electric F-150, expecting to now make 150,000 vehicles per year by 2023. Ford shares hit a 19-year-high on the news.
2) Nice visualization of 24 hours of flight data between the US and Europe.
3) Borrowing rates on mortgages have hit their highest level since May 2020, with the rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage — the most common home loan for homebuyers — jumping to 3.22%.
4) NowRx is building the local pharmacy of the future — help them and join the other 3,300+ investors in their Series C preferred round of investment.**
5) The US Supreme Court is set to rule on federal vaccine mandates. As of November roughly 18% of American businesses required COVID-19 vaccination.
6) A 4-year-old video is doing the rounds on social media about what shopping might look like in the metaverse... and everyone hates it.
7) Scientists from Northwestern University and UC Berkeley have captured the end of a red supergiant star's life for the first time.
**This is sponsored content.
