This story was originally published in On Background with Mark Stenberg, a free, weekly newsletter that explores the key themes shaping the media industry. You can sign up for it here.
In digital media, nothing is certain except death and the enduring dominance of live sports.
In recent years, the frenzy surrounding athletic content has reached a fever pitch, as live sport remains the lone source of monoculture in an otherwise balkanized entertainment landscape. This leverage has enabled leagues to extract eye-watering sums for their broadcast rights. And superstar athletes—now some of the most consequential creators on the planet—are reshaping everything from geopolitics to anime.
In the scramble to chronicle this growing influence, the startup sports publishers OffBall and Togethxr have staked their claims in its two most dynamic spaces, and this week they announced a partnership.
Togethxr, created in 2021, and OffBall, launched in 2024, are both small digital media outfits, but they cover, respectively, two of the fastest-growing areas in athletics: women’s sports and sports culture.
The two share much in common, including lean but highly pedigreed teams. Togethxr was cofounded by the professional athletes Alex Morgan, Sue Bird, Simone Manuel, and Chloe Kim, alongside the sports media veteran Jessica Robertson. Last April, former Vice Media CEO and A+E Networks CEO Nancy Dubuc joined as its executive chair.
OffBall, which launched in September 2024, counts as its cofounders Michaela Hammond, part of the founding team of The Players’ Tribune; former Sports Illustrated editor-in-chief Chris Stone; and Adam Mendelsohn, whose communications firm Upland Workshop helped launch the media outlets Puck and LeBron James’ SpringHill Company.
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Both have also taken untraditional approaches to their editorial and commercial strategies, which have emphasized the predominance of social media, newsletters, video, and brand extensions.
In 2025, Togethxr brought in around $30 million in revenue and was profitable, chief business officer Tommy McQueen told ADWEEK. The roughly 40-person business generates revenue from three sources: creating custom content for brands; creating premium video content, like the recent series Surf Girls, for streamers and video platforms; and merchandising and commercial products.
That last line of business, which has generated upward of $6 million, stems largely from the success of its trademarked slogan: Everyone Watches Women’s Sports. The ubiquitous motto, which you have surely seen on a t-shirt or hat, has become a symbol of the growing interest in women’s sports, serving as both a promotion for female athletics and an avatar for the company itself.
OffBall, similarly, has prioritized growing a loyal audience over chasing scale.
The eight-person company has just a handful of editorial touchpoints, including 80,000 followers across social media and 20,000 newsletter subscribers, and its website intentionally eschews any use of artificial intelligence or personalization. Instead, a small group of editors curate the content on the site and across socials, keeping the cost of content production low while cultivating a distinct voice.
The startup has grown revenue 105% over the last 12 months and will reach the mid-seven figures this year, according to cofounder Michaela Hammond, who declined to share further financial specifics. OffBall generates revenue almost exclusively by producing branded content, including programs with Nike, WhatsApp, and CashApp.
Through the partnership, both publishers will borrow from each other to fill in core needs, as well as share joint benefits, such as a larger combined audience that they can now pitch to brand clients.
Togethxr, for instance, is limited in the volume of advertising inventory it has on offer, as it has historically only been able to sell against tentpole moments in the women’s sporting calendar, according to Dubuc. Offball, on the other hand, offers an always-on advertising opportunity through its culture of sports approach, which showcases athletes at moments unrelated to athletic contests, such as Art Basel.
Togethxr will also gain access to first-party data through OffBall newsletters and its logged-in website visitors, as well as its expanding slate of editorial IP and growing events portfolio. Offball hosted four events last year, with a total of six planned for this year. It also partnered with NBC News last month to produce original programming around NBA culture and has plans to introduce other such franchises in the near future.
For OffBall, aside from the expanded scale, the primary appeal of the partnership is the resources on hand at Togethxr, which include its sales, business development, and operations teams, according to cofounder Adam Mendelsohn. Going forward, OffBall will be able to use those capabilities as its own, providing it manpower without having to fundraise.
“The challenge when you raise the money is that you put yourself under immense pressure to scale revenue, and that leads to a slippery slope,” Mendelsohn said. “We’re trying to figure out if there’s a different way to do that.”
The tie-up is explicitly not a merger, but Togethxr will receive a minority equity stake and revenue from OffBall tied to the performance of the partnership, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The deal structure, which allows both firms to grow without raising any new capital, reflects the new logic of media entrepreneurship. No longer do outlets raise heaps of capital, hire outlandishly at the jump, and hope to make it up with scale—nobody other than The Messenger, that is.
Instead, in this new era of niche, bootstrapped outlets, publishers focus on operating as inexpensively as they can while building up direct, engaged audiences through one-to-one channels like newsletters. Video and social media, meanwhile, act as top-of-funnel devices that reach broad audiences, which can then be funneled into stickier channels or monetized through the more attractive CPM rates those channels command.
The editorial focus of the two outlets, both of which offer a more cost-effective approach for tapping into sports fandom, also reflects an emerging workaround to the prohibitively high price of original content production.
As publishers face downward revenue pressures, both institutional outlets, like The Washington Post, which recently shuttered its sports bureau, and startups are looking for ways to cover popular topics on smaller budgets. This phenomenon is hardly restricted to sports—lifestyle coverage has a particularly hard time justifying its ROI nowadays, hence the coming culling at Condé Nast—but it has proven material in the space, given how expensive it is to bankroll beat reporters or participate in sports rights.
Steadily building up engagement with a free product with an opted-in audience has become the new first step for digital media upstarts. If the partnership between OffBall and Togethxr proves fruitful, perhaps such mutually beneficial tie-ups might become more commonplace as well.
Talking Heds
Consumer Rapport (Exclusive): The 90-year-old publisher Consumer Reports unveiled a $3 million brand marketing campaign on Monday. The campaign is part of a broader push from the outfit to expand its base of 5 million paying members. The creative, which revolves around the tagline “We Never Stop Questioning,” aims to underscore the nonprofit’s consumer advocacy efforts, which have exposed the high levels of lead in certain protein powders and led to the recall of defective child car seats.
Surprisingly, Consumer Reports generates around 70% of its $266 million in revenue directly from memberships, with affiliate revenues making up the smallest line of its business—a stark contrast from peers like Wirecutter and The Strategist, for whom affiliate revenue is the primary play. Last year, it spent $33 million buying the products it tests, which it later auctions off to staff and their families, according to chief marketing officer Khalid El Khatib. Despite this high cost of content, the non-profit broke even in its most recent financial filings.
Beehiiv Goes to Market (Exclusive): In recent months, the creator economy platform Beehiiv has expanded dramatically beyond its origins as a newsletter platform. Given the shift in both its scale and scope, the company on Monday hired its first chief marketing officer, Darren Chait, most recently the vice president of growth at Calendly. Chait, who joined Calendly when it acquired his startup, has a strong track record of product-led marketing, a skillset that Beehiiv hopes to put to good use, according to CEO Tyler Denk. The hire is part of a broader growth spurt at the platform, which recently doubled its sales team, having set itself the goal of reaching $55 million in revenue this year.
Index Exchange and Audiochuck Glow Up (Exclusive): Chait is not the only executive stepping into a new office this week: The supply-side platform Index Exchange and the podcasting firm Audiochuck also named high-profile executive appointments this week. Index Exchange nabbed former Trade Desk whiz Catherine Patterson to serve as its new senior vice president of platform and partnerships, where she will focus on streaming and sell-side decisioning.
Audiochuck, in a sign of the times, has brought on Matt Shanfield as its first head of TV and film—a telling hire for a podcast studio. At Audiochuck (which is fresh off a licensing deal with Fox Corp.’s streamer Tubi) Shanfield will work to transform podcast properties like Crime Junkie into television and film properties, while simultaneously building out an IP pipeline through acquisition. Both hires—an SSP hiring a DSP alumna, and a podcast studio hiring a television executive—showcase just how upside down modern media has become.
Social Media Week Returns: In just a few weeks, ADWEEK will once again be hosting Social Media Week, by far the coolest event in our portfolio and one whose insights can legitimately help make or break your brand. I will be on-site, moderating panels and trying not to look washed, and would love to see you there. So join ADWEEK, on April 14 – 16 in New York, to tap into the cutting-edge tactics powering social for the top brands, media outlets, agencies, and creators in the world. Click here to learn more.
Pulled Quotes
“This is how people are getting content today.”
Malcolm Harris, host of the What the Truck logistics industry live-stream, on the rise of niche live-streamers
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“This is a race to the bottom, and it’s going to be bad for customers and for us.”
An anonymous credit card official, on the arms race amongst premium credit cards
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“There are easier ways to make $2.8 billion.”
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos, on the breakup fee that Paramount paid Netflix
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“What if humans are something better than machines? For that matter, what if it isn’t close?”
The Atlantic’s Charles Finch, reviewing Michael Pollan’s new book exploring AI and consciousness
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Quote/Unquote
Dan Suratt is the CEO of America’s Test Kitchen and, as of last week, the CEO of the newly created Culinary Media Group, which houses both ATK and Food52, after the former purchased the latter for around $10 million in a bankruptcy auction last month.
This interview has been edited.
Mark Stenberg: Why did America’s Test Kitchen buy Food52?
Dan Suratt: We had liked the asset for years and had a strong conviction that we wanted to buy it. There was a sales process before Food52 went into bankruptcy, and during that process we had bid north of the number that we ended up offering during the auction. If you go back a few years, when ATK was acquired in 2023 by our current owners, Marquee Brands, it was seen as a foundational asset, something we would build around. We are currently looking for other acquisition opportunities—Food52 is the first of many, not the final.
Mark: What does the ATK business look like?
Dan: Our biggest line of business is digital subscriptions to the ATK website and app, which number in the hundreds of thousands. We also have the cookbooks business, where we own about 5% of that market, as well as our CTV offering, media assets like Cook’s Illustrated, and our YouTube channel, which has 2.5 million subscribers. We also just inked a podcast deal with Netflix to produce three original series for the streamer, the last of which will debut this month.
Mark: How does Food52 slot into that?
Dan: What we bought includes the website, socials, commerce business, YouTube channel, and brand. With Food52, we want to apply the same strategy we applied to ATK, which is to reach consumers across every form of media. The biggest audience touchpoints for Food52 are their website and Instagram account, but we want to do more on YouTube and get Food52 back into books. We’re going to be on every medium that you can imagine.
Mark: Could there ever be a Food52 subscription product?
Dan: I’m not ruling that out, but you won’t subscribe to ATK and see Food52 content. What we love most about the Food52 opportunity is that it is such a distinct brand from ATK—there is very little overlap. Food52 is female-oriented and younger, whereas ATK is more 50-50 in its gender makeup and oriented toward consumers aged 40 to 60. So this is an opportunity for us to reach a different audience.
Mark: What are the relationships like with previous leadership? Are you in touch with either of the cofounders, and is the former CEO Erika Ayers sticking around?
Dan: Amanda [Hesser] and I have had a conversation, and we will be talking in the future. I’ve found her to be amazing, and the community that she built around the brand is what gave it its value. Erika is working with the estate and doing some consulting for us, but then leaving.
Mark: A lot of digital media is in retreat, whereas some food media brands are actively investing in their assets. What do you think the future of the space is?
Dan: Everybody has to eat, so you’re always going to be relevant in food. We are seeing traffic declines, like everyone else, which is why we are building across all these different channels so that we can meet people wherever they are. When it comes to AI, we talk about this a lot internally: AI doesn’t have tastebuds. It can tell you how to boil an egg, but you don’t want to rely on it when you’re hosting a dinner party; you want proven recipes from a trusted source. That comes down to brand.