Last updated: September 2026
Global rank: Worldwide · 2026-09
#13,367
AI visibility: Grade D
56
SEO health: Latest audit
0
Visits
3.8K
per month, estimated
Keywords
801
ranking in Google
Organic share
100%
3.8K organic visits
LLMS.txt
Published
136 lines AI engines can read
You're seeing the free preview of theathletic.com
theathletic.com Company Profile
The Athletic delivers long-form, ad-free sports reporting written by beat writers who know their teams inside out. It started by pulling together experienced journalists who had been cut from traditional newspapers and giving them room to write without daily traffic pressure. Readers pay a monthly fee for access to coverage across the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, soccer, college sports and more. The model focuses on national…
The Athletic was founded in 2016, about 10 years ago, and is headquartered in San Francisco, United States. Its workforce is listed as between 201 and 500 employees. Its profile files it under Media, Entertainment & Gaming, with further tags for Sports Media, Subscription Journalism and Digital Publishing. Its tagline reads: "Subscription sports journalism that covers every team and league with real depth".
- Sector
- Media, Entertainment & Gaming
- Headquarters
- San Francisco, United States
- Founded
- 2016
- Employees
- 201-500
- Revenue
- Not Disclosed
- Funding
- Not Disclosed
theathletic.com Web Traffic Statistics
Key findings
- The Athletic (Media, Entertainment & Gaming) is ranked #13,367 worldwide in our September 2026 domain ranking, inside the top 100,000, down 27 places from #13,340 in August 2026.
- It is estimated to receive about 3,785 visits a month from search, 100% of it organic, across 801 ranking keywords.
- Its AI visibility score is 56 out of 100 (grade D), with a published llms.txt of 136 lines.
- Its last technical audit scored 0/100, with "Implement Robots.txt and Sitemap" the highest-priority fix.
| Month | Rank | Move |
|---|---|---|
| September 2026 | #13,367 | ▼ 27 |
| August 2026 | #13,340 | ▼ 2,627 |
| July 2026 | #10,713 | ▼ 205 |
| June 2026 | #10,508 | — |
| May 2026 | #10,508 | ▲ 2,194 |
| April 2026 | #12,702 | ▼ 2,750 |
| March 2026 | #9,952 | ▲ 387 |
| February 2026 | #10,339 | — |
What this company does
The Athletic delivers long-form, ad-free sports reporting written by beat writers who know their teams inside out. It started by pulling together experienced journalists who had been cut from traditional newspapers and giving them room to write without daily traffic pressure. Readers pay a monthly fee for access to coverage across the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, soccer, college sports and more. The model focuses on national…
Our read on the site
The Athletic has a solid foundation for SEO with a strong title and meta description, but it suffers from critical technical issues such as missing robots.txt and sitemap files. Additionally, the absence of H1 tags and a favicon could hinder its visibility and user experience.
theathletic.com Traffic and Visitor Engagement
theathletic.com draws an estimated 3,785 visits a month from search engines. Effectively all of it is organic — about 3,785 visits from unpaid results. Spread across 801 ranking keywords, that averages roughly 4.7 organic visits per keyword.
Monthly visits
3.8K
Latest estimate
Change
No monthly history yet
It starts building from the first scan
Organic visits
3.8K
100% of all traffic
Paid visits
0
No paid search detected
Organic vs paid
100%
0%
We don't hold a month-by-month history for this domain yet.
The traffic dashboard builds one from the first scan onwards.
theathletic.com AI Visibility
On our AI visibility scale theathletic.com earns 56 of 100 points, a grade D. It takes full marks for LLMS.txt. The biggest gap is SEO health, at 0 of 20 points (0/100), worth 20 points if closed. It also loses points on Crawlability (0/10), Company profile (16/25) and Structured data (0/5).
Grade D
Scored from this domain's own data — llms.txt, profile completeness, technical health, crawlability and structured data.
Present
5/8 core fields
0/100
robots ✗ · sitemap ✗
Not detected
Fix these first
- → Complete your company profile so AI answers about you stay accurate.
- → Add robots.txt and sitemap.xml so AI crawlers can read you.
theathletic.com LLMS.txt
The llms.txt on theathletic.com runs to 136 lines (5,471 characters) across 12 sections, last generated in April 2026. It introduces the site as "The Athletic - Sports News Subscription". It tells AI engines the business works in Media, Sports Journalism and Digital Subscription. It describes 3 products, with prices such as Sports News Subscription at $7.99/month or $59.99/year and Podcasts and Audio Content at Free with subscription. The audience it names is Sports enthusiasts, Professionals, Students, aged 18-54 (North America). Technologies it mentions include React, Node.js, AWS, PostgreSQL and Google Analytics. The keywords it claims start with "sports news", "sports coverage", "breaking news" and "sports stories".
Status
Published
AI engines can read it
Lines
136
In the file
Size
5.5K
Characters
Sections
12
Updated Apr 6, 2026
What the file says
# The Athletic - Sports News Subscription ## About The Athletic is a subscription-based sports news website that provides in-depth coverage of various sports teams and leagues. It caters to sports enthusiasts by delivering breaking news, powerful stories, and smart analysis from some of the best writers in the industry. The platform aims to fill the gap left by local newspapers by reaching a broader audience of non-local fans, ensuring they have access to quality sports journalism. **Areas of Work:** Media, Sports Journalism, Digital Subscription ## Things to Remember - **Website:** https://theathletic.com - **Address:** Not Available, San Francisco, United States - **Contact:** [email protected] - **Phone:** +1-415-555-0199 - **Hours:** 24/7 - **Timezone:** America/Los_Angeles - **Currency:** USD - **Company Type:** Private - **Employees:** 300 employees - **Revenue:** $50M - **Hiring Status:** Yes, actively hiring ## Products - **Sports News Subscription** ($7.99/month or $59.99/year): Access to in-depth sports news coverage, articles, and analysis. - **Podcasts and Audio Content** (Free with subscription): Exclusive podcasts featuring sports analysis and interviews with athletes. - **In-depth Articles and Analysis** (Included with subscription): Comprehensive articles covering various sports topics and teams. ## Services ## Keywords sports news, sports coverage,
Sections in the file
Areas of work
Keywords it claims
Technologies
Products it tells AI about
- Sports News Subscription$7.99/month or $59.99/year
- Podcasts and Audio ContentFree with subscription
- In-depth Articles and AnalysisIncluded with subscription
Competitors it names
Audience it targets
Sports enthusiasts, Professionals, Students · 18-54 · North America
Company type
Private · actively hiring
theathletic.com Organic Keywords
Google lists theathletic.com for about 801 keywords, which together bring an estimated 3,785 organic visits a month.
Ranking keywords
801
Found in Google for this domain
Visits they bring
3.8K
Estimated organic visits a month
Top ranking keywords
No ranked-keyword data cached for this domain yet.
Ranked Keywords pulls the full list on its first run.
What it ranks for
theathletic.com SEO Audit
The latest technical audit of theathletic.com scored 0 out of 100 overall. The audit makes 12 recommendations in all, and 3 of the 4 listed first are rated high priority or critical.
Overall
SEO
Performance
Accessibility
Fix these first
- CriticalImplement Robots.txt and Sitemap
- CriticalReduce Page Load Time
- HighAdd H1 Tags
- MediumImplement a Favicon
8 more recommendations, with the exact changes and the pages they apply to, are in the full report.
theathletic.com Competitors and Alternatives
The Athletic's company profile names espn.com, bleacherreport.com, cbssports.com and sports.yahoo.com as competitors. Its own llms.txt adds sportsillustrated.com and foxsports.com. Outside its market, the domains ranked closest to it in our worldwide ranking are upf.edu, aeaweb.org, canva.link and quizizz.com.
theathletic.com Traffic by Country
Which markets this brand actually serves, and where the web links to it from.
Top customer markets
AI estimate · live webWe only measure visitor geography for domains whose analytics are connected to us. For everyone else this is read live from the web and shown as an estimate — never mixed in with the measured numbers.
No market breakdown available for this brand.
Where its backlinks come from
Measured. The country each linking site is hosted in — a real signal of which regions know this brand.
No backlink sample for this domain yet.
Backlink Analytics collects one on its first run.
theathletic.com Backlink Analytics
Who vouches for this domain. Strong, varied links are still the clearest signal of authority — to search engines and to AI engines that cite sources.
We haven't run a backlink crawl for theathletic.com yet, so there are no link counts to show. Backlink Analytics builds the profile on its first run and it appears here after that.
—
links on file
Companies ranked next to theathletic.com
Neighbours of #13,367 in our worldwide ranking — each with its own report.
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