A profit of 4 million euros against a loss of 10 million for The Team, last year: the sports daily comes out of the red. The subsidiary of the Amaury group, which includes the paper newspaper, the website and the TV channel, returns to profit in 2021 and celebrates the first anniversary of the two new universes of its site, Explore and Live. Its editorial director Jérôme Cazadieu first points to the atypical years that have just passed: “The newspaper has obviously been extremely impacted by the Covid crisis, the end of sporting events for three or four months, football which does not resume in 2020. But since last summer, we have had a recovery which has been almost at normal since we had a Euro football and the Olympic Games.
“We are returning to a normal rhythm and the newspaper is doing better, also because we are ensuring the digital transition at the same time, in particular via digital subscriptions.”
Jerome Cazadieuat franceinfo
The Team, with its television channel and its website, accelerated its digital transformation a year ago by creating two new universes on the site: Explore for audio documentaries or long-format papers, and Live, for the broadcasting of events sportsmen. Jérôme Cazadieu had already been at the initiative in 2009 of magazine pages and surveys: “These two new universes on the site of The Team are already showing very positive results for us, emphasizes Jérôme Cazadieu. The idea was as follows: we are very dependent on the sports calendars and the results of the French, national teams, how to be less dependent on an information offer that can fluctuate depending on the calendar.”
“The idea was to have a platform offer that would interest our readers, those who are already subscribers and those who are not, in periods that are a little more hollow.”
Jerome Cazadieuat franceinfo
After Roland-Garros and the Tour de France, the daily is also preparing to cover the World Cup in Qatar: “We will have 26 people to cover it, emphasizes Jérôme Cazadieu. The particularity is that this World Cup takes place at the end of the year. It’s unprecedented. We don’t have many references since this is the first time it’s happened. Historically, the strongest sales such as subscriptions or site traffic occur during the summer and we go down again at the end of the year because there are fewer competitions. There, it will be positioned at a time that is not a highlight. We think it’s going to work pretty well and it’s obviously going to be our highlight for the end of the year.”