"For more than a decade, digital publishing has lived and died by the algorithm. A single tweak to Facebook's feed or Google's search ranking could send a site's traffic soaring or cut it in half overnight. Sports media, once thriving on viral highlights, SEO spikes, and short-lived surges from Google Discover, became especially vulnerable to that volatility. The audiences were massive, but they never really belonged to the publishers themselves."
"Across sports media, the newsletter has become a kind of reset button. What started as an email roundup is now the front line of fan engagement, a place where publishers can build trust, loyalty, and habit. All these qualities social media platforms have made increasingly hard to achieve. One of the companies at the forefront of this shift is EssentiallySports, a US based digital sports media brand that has quietly built one of the largest owned sports newsletter networks in the industry."
Digital publishing became highly dependent on platforms' algorithms, where small changes to Facebook or Google could dramatically alter site traffic. Sports media suffered particularly from volatility tied to viral content, SEO spikes, and Google Discover surges, with audiences that rarely belonged to publishers. As advertising models fragment and search increasingly answers queries directly, publishers are reassessing audience ownership and sustainability. Newsletters have reemerged as a primary channel for direct fan engagement, enabling trust, loyalty, and habitual consumption. EssentiallySports built a large owned newsletter network, operating ten sport-specific newsletters and organically reaching over 1.5 million subscribers via loyal, frequent readers.
Read at Inquisitr News
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