New York Times

The NYT's digital turnaround is real - but the 10-million milestone was reached because a $550M sports-site purchase added 1.2M subscribers overnight. And the bundle that drives growth now trades higher-paying news subscribers for cheaper ones: bundle ARPU fell 6.7% in 2024.

The Times turned a dying ad business into 12.78 million paying subscribers by 2025. But the turnaround leaned on a $550M acquisition that ran at a loss for years - and a 15-million target that needs growth it has rarely sustained twice in a row.

Everyone calls the Times an ad-supported media company. It isn't anymore: in 2024, subscriptions were a clear majority of $2.59B in revenue, advertising shrank to a minority stream, and free cash flow hit $381M. It's a software business that happens to employ journalists.

Everyone reads the NYT bundle as an ARPU machine. The 2024 10-K says otherwise: bundle ARPU fell 6.7% as cheap subscribers flooded in, while the news-only base shrank 30.6%. The Times is trading price for lock-in - and won't tell you how well it's working.

Everyone says the Times paid low-seven figures for Wordle and became a games company. Wrong frame. Games is the cheapest on-ramp into the bundle - and the data show that the on-ramp's natural home, single-product subscribers, is the fastest-growing cohort and the lowest-paying one, at $3.36 ARPU.

In 2009 the Times borrowed $250 million from a Mexican billionaire's companies at a punishing 14% and sold 21 floors of its own headquarters. The heroic-turnaround story skips the part that actually saved it: time, and a paywall that paid off years later than anyone remembers.