Business 3 min read By Arthur Ellington
The Onion plans to sponsor a college football bowl game to challenge The Washington Post
The satirical publication The Onion is planning to sponsor a college football bowl game as part of a subscriber growth push, with CEO Ben Collins aiming to overtake The Washington Post in print circulation.
The Onion, the satirical news publication, plans to sponsor a college football bowl game as part of a strategy to grow its subscriber base, according to a report from Inc. The effort is being led by chief executive Ben Collins, who has framed the move around a clear competitive goal: growing the publication's print circulation past that of The Washington Post.
The plan is presented as a subscriber growth initiative rather than a purely promotional sponsorship. By attaching its brand to a college football bowl game, the publication would seek to reach sports audiences and convert that attention into paying readers. The report frames the rival in personal terms, naming Jeff Bezos, who owns The Washington Post, as the figure the publication is aiming to outpace. The headline of the original report presents the plan as a direct contest with Bezos on his own ground, a framing that reflects the competitive tone of the announcement.
The available details of the plan remain limited. The reporting does not specify the name of the bowl game, its date, or the host institution, and the financial terms of the sponsorship have not been disclosed. Nor has the report set out how many subscribers the publication currently has or how large its print circulation is, so the scale of the gap it hopes to close cannot be measured from the material available. It is also not yet clear whether the strategy will achieve its stated aim of surpassing The Washington Post in circulation, and the claim rests on the plans as described by the company's chief executive.
The initiative is an unusual one for a publication built on satire and for a newspaper with a long-established print readership. The Washington Post is one of the most widely read newspapers in the United States, and any attempt to overtake it in print circulation would represent an ambitious target for a satirical title. Sponsorship of a sporting event is a common route for media brands seeking wider visibility, but the reporting does not indicate whether the Onion's bowl sponsorship would involve editorial content, branded material or subscription offers tied to the event.
No reaction from The Washington Post, from Jeff Bezos or from the college football bodies involved has been reported. Further information on the sponsorship, including its scale, timing and commercial terms, will be needed to judge how the plan would be carried out and whether it could move the publication's readership figures in the way its chief executive intends.
Source: inc.com
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