[Fangraphs] Why We’re Moving Our Articles to a Metered Paywall
September 13, 2024
[Fangraphs] Why We’re Moving Our Articles to a Metered Paywall
32 comments
>Readers will get 10 free articles per rolling 30 days; if you go over that and would like to continue reading, you’ll be required to become a FanGraphs Member. Our player pages, leaderboards, and other data tools, as well as RosterResource, The Board, and our glossary, will remain available for unlimited use to all of our readers.
good thing anything I would want to read will just bring me pain
Hahahaha…
:/
FanGraphs is one of the few sites I subscribe to. Their tools and articles make it well worth supporting.
I can’t stress how worthwhile my subscription is, I hope others soon learn the same!
I don’t like it but it makes sense, esp in the last few years. They’ve been pretty open about how the site is doing sorta okay but not in a sustainable way that they can afford the type of dips every website goes through.
They should probably cut down on the jokey headlines and ledes, though, since people won’t be able to actually know what they’re talking about now without clicking through and burning one of their articles.
They can never make me hate you Fangraphs
Pretty lame. It’s already inundated with ads. I can’t imagine this will move the needle very much.
Lame
Everything is just going to get posted for free by someone with a sub, this is never a monetization model that works when sites make the switch. It just drives traffic away from your site and then your ad payout goes down.
Gonna use adblocker and look up on archive.is just to spite them
Greedy
As long as they keep their stats / data pages free to use, then I’m fine with this.
Their analysis comes from real work, and their writers deserve fair compensation.
If this means paying their writers enough to do what they enjoy, then go for it.
[deleted]
It had to happen eventually.
I’m one of those active readers that instead of paying, have my adblock turned off for fangraphs. I’ll leave the adblock turned off, but I don’t think I’ll pay for more access. I’ll just learn to live without some articles.
I am disappointed but have always wondered how they stay afloat. It just sort of got to that point.
10 articles is pretty generous. A lot of news sites don’t let you read more than 3-5 at most and some don’t let you read at all.
Hey, as long as the title and comments are free
Sad, but makes sense honestly, they’re great articles
One of the few sites I am a member of. Totally worth it! I wish NotGraphs would make a return, though I know it won’t happen.
Me: why i’m never reading fangraphs again.
People getting super upset about this … basically acknowledging that it’s a valuable resource to them … and still refusing to pay.
You’re the worst.
Thanks, I… kinda understand the reasoning here.
Welp. FG was one of the only sites I let through my ad-block. And since I hate ads but want to support them, time to become a member.
I dont care what the article says. This is because they have Lindor as more valuable as Ohtani.
I like their articles but I am firmly in the baseball-reference camp when it comes to sortable database tools
Makes complete sense. The full ad supported media website model just doesn’t work anymore
I’m fine with Fangraphs doing this, but fuck I hate subscriptions. Just let me pay $500 for life and let’s be done with the recurring bullshit.
Bring back The Hardball Times
I hope this is to help create more content rather than recoup what they feel was lost revenue being free as long as they were. As a former baseball writer I’m all for baseball writers getting more money, but I worry they realized they needed more money to stay at the level they’ve established.
If I had money, I’d pay to be a Fangraphs subscriber. 🤷
I’m a web developer and I’ve always wondered how sites keep track of how many of your “10 free articles” you’ve used. It must be based on clever browser telemetry of some sort because in my experience it’s not simply based on your IP address, and dumb stuff like clearing your cache/cookies doesn’t game the system either. BUT, >!usually if you use up your quota on Chrome or whatever, you can just open Firefox on the same machine and start fresh!<. To be clear I’m not suggesting anybody should do this to Fangraphs; their content is worth every penny of this new model they have. I’m just curious how it’s implemented from a tech perspective.
If you want to have informed high-quality professional sportswriter you’re going to have to pay them somehow and the ad-based internet is dying because ads aren’t profitable enough for the vast majority of companies. The alternative is SEO optimized websites pumping out 10 articles a day with ChatGPT with maybe one editor and developer to make sure the websites works and nothing too egregious is printed. I always see paying for news thats good as solidarity with other workers.
32 comments
>Readers will get 10 free articles per rolling 30 days; if you go over that and would like to continue reading, you’ll be required to become a FanGraphs Member.
Our player pages, leaderboards, and other data tools, as well as RosterResource, The Board, and our glossary, will remain available for unlimited use to all of our readers.
good thing anything I would want to read will just bring me pain
Hahahaha…
:/
FanGraphs is one of the few sites I subscribe to. Their tools and articles make it well worth supporting.
I can’t stress how worthwhile my subscription is, I hope others soon learn the same!
I don’t like it but it makes sense, esp in the last few years. They’ve been pretty open about how the site is doing sorta okay but not in a sustainable way that they can afford the type of dips every website goes through.
They should probably cut down on the jokey headlines and ledes, though, since people won’t be able to actually know what they’re talking about now without clicking through and burning one of their articles.
They can never make me hate you Fangraphs
Pretty lame. It’s already inundated with ads. I can’t imagine this will move the needle very much.
Lame
Everything is just going to get posted for free by someone with a sub, this is never a monetization model that works when sites make the switch. It just drives traffic away from your site and then your ad payout goes down.
Gonna use adblocker and look up on archive.is just to spite them
Greedy
As long as they keep their stats / data pages free to use, then I’m fine with this.
Their analysis comes from real work, and their writers deserve fair compensation.
If this means paying their writers enough to do what they enjoy, then go for it.
[deleted]
It had to happen eventually.
I’m one of those active readers that instead of paying, have my adblock turned off for fangraphs. I’ll leave the adblock turned off, but I don’t think I’ll pay for more access. I’ll just learn to live without some articles.
I am disappointed but have always wondered how they stay afloat. It just sort of got to that point.
10 articles is pretty generous. A lot of news sites don’t let you read more than 3-5 at most and some don’t let you read at all.
Hey, as long as the title and comments are free
Sad, but makes sense honestly, they’re great articles
One of the few sites I am a member of. Totally worth it! I wish NotGraphs would make a return, though I know it won’t happen.
Me: why i’m never reading fangraphs again.
People getting super upset about this … basically acknowledging that it’s a valuable resource to them … and still refusing to pay.
You’re the worst.
Thanks, I… kinda understand the reasoning here.
Welp. FG was one of the only sites I let through my ad-block. And since I hate ads but want to support them, time to become a member.
I dont care what the article says. This is because they have Lindor as more valuable as Ohtani.
I like their articles but I am firmly in the baseball-reference camp when it comes to sortable database tools
Makes complete sense. The full ad supported media website model just doesn’t work anymore
I’m fine with Fangraphs doing this, but fuck I hate subscriptions. Just let me pay $500 for life and let’s be done with the recurring bullshit.
Bring back The Hardball Times
I hope this is to help create more content rather than recoup what they feel was lost revenue being free as long as they were. As a former baseball writer I’m all for baseball writers getting more money, but I worry they realized they needed more money to stay at the level they’ve established.
If I had money, I’d pay to be a Fangraphs subscriber. 🤷
I’m a web developer and I’ve always wondered how sites keep track of how many of your “10 free articles” you’ve used. It must be based on clever browser telemetry of some sort because in my experience it’s not simply based on your IP address, and dumb stuff like clearing your cache/cookies doesn’t game the system either. BUT, >!usually if you use up your quota on Chrome or whatever, you can just open Firefox on the same machine and start fresh!<. To be clear I’m not suggesting anybody should do this to Fangraphs; their content is worth every penny of this new model they have. I’m just curious how it’s implemented from a tech perspective.
If you want to have informed high-quality professional sportswriter you’re going to have to pay them somehow and the ad-based internet is dying because ads aren’t profitable enough for the vast majority of companies. The alternative is SEO optimized websites pumping out 10 articles a day with ChatGPT with maybe one editor and developer to make sure the websites works and nothing too egregious is printed. I always see paying for news thats good as solidarity with other workers.