StubHub and The Athletic announced a multi-year, exclusive ticketing deal on Thursday that both hope will give the publication’s audience further access to live sporting events. The deal will see StubHub brought in as a visible partner for the sports-centric website’s readers, giving them streamlined access to tickets available through the resale marketplace.

“Millions of sports fans around the world trust The Athletic for the latest, and most accurate, sports news and content, just as StubHub is trusted to give fans access to the sporting events they love,” said Cris Miller, Chief Business Officer at StubHub. “By partnering with The Athletic, we can reach an engaged and motivated audience of sports fans and help connect them to the experiences they’re interested in.”

The Athletic, a subscription-based sports publication based in San Francisco, was launched as a subscriber-supported publication in 2016 in hopes of competing against struggling ad-based publications. It has grown over the past seven years into one of the leading sports journalism outlets in North America and into the UK, and was bought for $440 million by the New York Times in 2022.

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As part of the partnership, StubHub will see its branding and ticketing pages integrated throughout The Athletic’s ecosystem. This will include placement on team, league, and schedule pages, as well as within editorial content, live blogs, social media postings, and email newsletters.

“Our collaboration with StubHub marks an exciting milestone for The Athletic, and continues to fulfill our promise to subscribers to bring them increased value in their overall reader experience,” says Sebastian Tomich, chief commercial and development officer, The Athletic. “We see many synergistic opportunities for our brands to work together around live sporting events, and know this type of collaboration is of strong interest to our audience who passionately attend and tune into these must-watch games.”

StubHub was founded more than 20 years ago and has been a leading ticket resale marketplace since its inception. It was purchased by eBay in 2007, but was then purchased by viagogo and original co-founder Erik Baker for $4 billion in a deal that closed just before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down much of the live events industry. It services ticket listings for events in 150 countries and boasts more than 50 million tickets available to events around the world.

The full press release announcing the deal between StubHub and The Athletic is available here

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