NY Times reports digital subscription revenue now their largest revenue stream

The New York Times Company reported a record number of digital subscriptions in 2020, a revenue stream that has now become its largest, according to a new earnings report. 

The Times exceeded 7.5 million subscriptions for its digital products and print newspaper, the company reported, a metric that came after it had already added 2.3 million digital-only subscriptions. 

“In 2020, we reached two key milestones, both of which we expect to be enduring: Digital revenue overtook print for the first time, and digital subscription revenue, long our fastest-growing revenue stream, is also now our largest,” Meredith Kopit Levien, the Times’s top executive, said in a statement to the paper. “Those two milestones, and our best year on record for subscriptions, mark the end of the first decade of The Times’s transformation into a digital-first, subscription-first company.”

The Times reported more than 5 million of its subscriptions are for the news product only, with less than 1 million print subscribers currently.

Revenue generated by all subscriptions print and digital increased by 10 percent, to $1.195 billion, in 2020, the company said. 

Ad sales continued to decline last year at the Times. 

The Times reported overall advertising revenue dropped 26 percent, to $392.4 million, including a 39 percent dip in print ad revenue.

“With a billion people reading digital news, and an expected 100 million willing to pay for it in English, it’s not hard to imagine that, over time, The Times’s subscriber base could be substantially larger than where we are today,” Levien said.