New York Times Tops 11.5 Million Subscribers as Multi-Product Bundle Drives Growth

The New York Times has expanded its paid subscriber base to more than 11.5 million across digital and print products, driven by Chief Executive Officer Meredith Kopit Levien’s strategy to transform the publication into an all-access multi-product platform. The publisher added 250,000 digital-only subscribers in its most recent quarter, generating a digital subscription revenue increase of more than 14% over that three-month period as non-news lifestyle products fuel corporate growth.

Under the multi-product model, the company offers an all-access subscription combining news with non-news verticals including Games, Cooking, Wirecutter, and The Athletic. Out of the company’s total digital user base, the vast majority now subscribe to multi-product packages rather than news coverage alone.

So far, the bundle strategy has borne fruit. In fact, of the Times’ 11 million-plus digital subscribers, only 1.9 million pay for news alone. Levien calls it “the essential subscription for every curious person.” The Times doesn’t want drive-by traffic, she says. It wants daily, habitual engagement.

To capture daily engagement, the publisher expanded its product suite by acquiring the product recommendation site Wirecutter, building out the Cooking vertical, and buying the viral puzzle Wordle in 2022 for a low seven-figure sum. The Games app generated 10 million downloads in 2023, with users playing its puzzles 11 billion times last year—5.3 billion of which were Wordle plays. Meanwhile, the Cooking platform recorded over 456 million visits across its website and app in 2024.

The New York Times Cooking app saw a spike during the pandemic lockdown.

Gabby Jones–Bloomberg via Getty Images

Levien says her strategy rests on three pillars: lead in news, win in lifestyle, and make the bundle indispensable. The logic appears simple. The more often readers engage across the Times’ ecosystem, the more likely they are to subscribe, stay, and engage. Every product is built to reinforce that habit.

Full-year financial disclosures published by The New York Times Company Investor Relations show that total annual subscription revenue reached $1.65 billion in 2024, representing the core driver of the company’s $2.59 billion in overall revenue. Digital subscription revenues grew 12.8% year-over-year to $1.13 billion, while total advertising revenues generated approximately $506 million across print and digital operations.

Buying the viral word game Wordle has handsomely paid off for the New York Times.

Jakub Porzycki—NurPhoto via Getty Images

The sports media division, The Athletic, acquired in 2022, generated $172.1 million in revenue during fiscal year 2024, marking a 31% increase from the prior year. Although the unit posted a $5 million loss for the full year, it achieved operating profitability in both the third and fourth quarters, progressing toward corporate targets set when the publisher bought the entity.

Meredith Kopit Levien speaks at a New York Times event in 2025.

David Dee Delgado—Getty Images for The New York Times

Direct relationships through owned digital channels form the operational foundation of the subscriber growth model. The New York Times site and mobile applications averaged approximately 137 million monthly unique visitors globally in 2024, with over 150 million registered users. Its daily newsletter, The Morning, reaches 16 million subscribers, while the audio podcast The Daily averages 4 million weekly listeners.

The company continues to pursue a target of reaching 15 million total paid subscriptions by 2027, relying on algorithmic content recommendations and multi-product bundling to drive user conversion and retention across its digital properties.