New York Times Reaches 10M Subscribers After Purchase Of Wordle, The Athletic

Following the purchases of the subscription-based sports news site The Athletic and the popular online game Wordle, The New York Times announced it had reached its goal of 10 million subscribers three years early on Wednesday.

“In early 2019, we established a goal of reaching 10 million subscriptions by 2025. With the acquisition of The Athletic, which closed yesterday, and the 8.8 million subscriptions we achieved on our own, we have now surpassed this target. Even without The Athletic, we believe we would have reached 10 million subscriptions far sooner than we originally anticipated,” said President and CEO Meredith Kopit Levien in a fourth-quarter earnings call.

The NYTimes has now set a new goal to hit at least 15 million subscribers by the end of 2027.

The purchase of Wordle was announced by the publication on Monday.

“It joins our portfolio of original, engaging puzzle games that delight and challenge solvers, and it gives them reasons to come to The Times every day,” Levien said Wednesday.

Amid the purchase, online players have shared their fears that the game would be stuck behind a paywall like much of the publication's content. However, the NYTimes has assured players that “Wordle will be free to play for new and existing players" and that "no changes will be made to its gameplay.”

(FILES) In this file illustration photo taken on January 11, 2022 a person plays online word game "Wordle" on a mobile phone in Washington, DC. The New York Times announced on January 31, 2022 that it had bought Wordle, a phenomenon played by millions just four months after the game burst onto the Internet, for an "undisclosed price in the low seven figures. AFP / Stefani Reynolds

Still, questions about how the NYTimes plans to incorporate Wordle have continued. Already, the race to create spinoff games and translate the game into more languages to access millions of more players is competitive.

Josh Wardle, a software engineer in Brooklyn who created the game, made it public in the fall of 2021.

“[Ninety] people played the game on November 1. Nearly two months later, 300,000 people played it. Now, the puzzle has millions of daily players,” the NYTimes wrote in a press release.

“If you’ve followed along with the story of Wordle, you’ll know that NYT games play a big part in its origins, and so this step feels very natural to me,” Wardle wrote, in part, in a Jan. 31 statement on Twitter. “I’m thrilled that they will be stewards of the game moving forward.”