New York Times Adds 230,000 Digital Subscribers in 2nd Quarter

The New York Times added 230,000 digital-only subscribers in the second quarter of 2025 for a total of 11.3 million. Of that total, approximately 6.02 million were bundle and multi-product subscribers. When including print, the company has a total of 11.9 million subscribers.

Total subscription revenues grew 9.6% to $481.4 million, with digital-only climbing 15.1% to $350.4 million due to an increase in bundle and multiproduct revenues and an increase in other single-product subscription revenues, partially offset by a decrease in news-only subscription revenues. Digital-only average revenue per user grew 3.2% to $9.64, driven by subscribers transitioning from promotional to higher prices and price increases on certain tenured subscribers.

Print subscription revenues fell 2.8%to $131.1 million, primarily due to lower domestic home-delivery revenues.

Out of the New York Times’ many products, The Athletic brand had an especially strong quarter. The sports-focused vertical increased its revenue by 33.4% year-over-year, hitting $54.0 million during the quarter. This was partially due to growth in the number of Athletic subscribers, which grew thanks to bundling subscriptions. Subscription revenues increased 18.1% to hit $34.6 million during the quarter. Advertising revenues also increased by an impressive 98.8% to hit $14.1 million due to due to higher revenues from display advertising.

Looking ahead to the third quarter of 2025, the company plans to combine its two segments — The New York Times Group and The Athletic — to be one reportable segment.

Here are the quarterly results:

Net income: $82.95 billion, up 26.6% year over year, compared to $65.54 billion a year ago.

Earnings Per Share: Diluted earnings per share of 50 cents. Excluding certain items, adjusted EPS came in at 58 cents per share, compared to 51 cents per share expected by analysts surveyed by Yahoo Finance.

Total Revenue: $685.9 million, up 9.7% year over year, compared to $669.66 million expected by analysts surveyed by Yahoo Finance.

NYT’s total ad revenue jumped 12.4% to $134 million, with digital up 18.7% to $94.4 million due to new advertising supply in areas of strong marketer demand and print down 0.1% to $39.6 million. Affiliate, licensing and other revenues rose 5.8% to $70.5 million, driven by higher licensing revenues and Wirecutter affiliate referral revenues.

As is the case with nearly every company’s earnings these days, one of the main topics of Wednesday’s earnings call had to do with AI. The second quarter of 2025 included $3.5 million of pre-tax litigation-related costs that were related to the New York Times’ copyright infringement lawsuit against Microsoft Corporation and Open AI Inc. The second quarter of 2024 also included a special item of $2.0 million related to generative AI litigation costs.

As for the company’s AI licensing deal with Amazon, that began at the end of May and was included in the company’s guidance for the second quarter of 2025.

“We don’t break out revenue by deal,” William Bardeen, executive vice president and Chief Financial Officer, said during the call. “We are showing an acceleration in the affiliate licensing other revenue line in Q3 to high single digits from what was 6% in Q2, and that will be the first full quarter with that Amazon agreement, which is playing a role in that line. Just always remember with affiliate licensing and other revenue, it has a lot of moving parts that can create some lumpiness.”

More to come…

The post New York Times Adds 230,000 Digital Subscribers in 2nd Quarter appeared first on TheWrap.