The State of Braves Today: Expressing thanks

It's a day of thankfulness, and I'm grateful for each of you

(This is almost entirely non-baseball, talking about what we’re doing here with Braves Today and where we plan to take this in the coming months and years. If that’s not your thing, no hard feelings. Back to the baseball content tomorrow.)

Dear reader,

Whether you’re a new subscriber or you’ve been with Braves Today through its previous affiliations (Sports Illustrated, Athlon Sports, etc), I wanted to thank you for being here with me.

I started this website because I wanted to cover the Atlanta Braves differently - one that wasn’t necessarily reliant on nightly gamers and reporting rumors but rather talking about what happened in the games and why. We do takeaways, not gamers, discussing what happened in the game from a strategic perspective - why Spencer Schwellenbach was so successful against the Phillies (a career-low fastball usage) and analysis of players and strategies (like this piece from last offseason, about why Spencer Strider might add a new pitch over the winter.)

I feel like we’ve been pretty successful at that, but I also have learned a lot: About how that’s incompatible with the aggregation-heavy, hot-take online media landscape that exists outside of the established outlets. Beat writers usually aren’t beholden to that, but everyone else in this industry is - your stories have to get clicks, and a lot of them, and the goal is to pump out five or six stories a day that have sensational headlines like “Braves Aiming to Add $135M All-Star in Blockbuster Winter Deal” when the actual story is that some writer, somewhere, predicted the Braves could potentially be interested in signing some random free agent.

The decisions to move on from both Sports Illustrated and Athlon Sports were mine, in the end - I wasn’t happy with what they were asking of me from a content perspective, and the workload required to maintain that publishing schedule was a lot (I’m sure my wife would argue too much - I was solo on the SI site last May and wrote 121 articles in one month).

So I created this substack, and we’ve published 56 articles in the first two months. I also took over the existing Braves Today podcast, which was originally a partnership between us and a local radio host that came out…sporadically every week. I partnered with Bleav on the audio side (which required re-starting the audio feed and changing some of the branding) and converted the pod to a mostly daily format.

Both of these are going well, although the reach is definitely a lot smaller than what we had with Sports Illustrated (and to a lesser extent, Athlon).

To paraphrase Jason Isbell, “I may have lost some of my audience, but I still have my soul.”

I want to chat for a minute about where we stand now and where we’re going in the future.

We turned on optional premium subscriptions

You may have received an email this week that Braves Today is now accepting premium subscriptions - I turned that on and, sure enough, we saw five immediate subscriptions come in from the first two days.

(To Zac, Brad, Andrew, William, and Christian: Thank you. Means more to me than you know.)

I was set to attend the Winter Meetings for the second straight year before life got in the way, but that’s not the cheapest thing in the world: Flights, travel to the airport, hotels, etc. all add up. The same goes for attending games at Truist: I live about two hours away, so while I usually stay with some family friends up there for the weekend, there’s still gas, food, etc to take care of while I’m in Atlanta.

My goal with the subscription money isn’t to enable me to quit my full-time job, it’s to allow the financial flexibility to attend more often and be present, in person, more often than I have in the past.

(Would it be cool to build this to the point that it could be my only job? Of course, but I’m not expecting that to happen for a long time, if ever.)

Last year, I attended both the Winter Meetings and spring training in a partial cost-sharing arrangement with either a publisher or some colleagues, but for the most part, those expenses were paid for by me and we didn’t make enough direct revenue for those trips to be covered.

That’s why I turned on premium subs. As of now, I have no plans to put anything behind a paywall. While there are options for paywalled content that other newsletters do that we could take, like prospect rankings, deep analytical dives, etc, the goal is to pick up enough optional subscriptions to cover our costs so that we’re not losing money to attend major and minor league games and travel. That’s all.

That’s part of the reason we relaunched the podcast, as well - that’s a monetized YouTube channel and so those modest amounts that come from the podcast go into the same business account that’s used to cover reporting expenses.

(That and I apparently have a thing for doing podcasts - I wrapped my daily prospect podcast with Locked On in spring training and apparently…missed going on air five days a week?)

What’s coming in the future for Braves Today?

The goal is to be better able to afford more reporting trips - to Truist as well as all four full-season affiliates and for non-game coverage, like the Winter Meetings, All-Star Weekend, Spring Training, etc.

We’re looking at other things we can do to both raise revenue and enhance the experience for supporters, as well - do we design and sell merch (that we’d give away to premium members)? Subscriber-exclusive livestreams? Watch parties? Live recordings on location in The Battery? It’s all still a work in progress, but let me know if you have any ideas (contact@bravestoday.com).

For now, to recap the ways you support Braves Today:

• Subscribe to the podcast, either (or both) the YouTube channel or the audio feed

• Share a podcast episode or story you particularly liked with a friend - a majority of our non-email traffic to the site comes from Facebook, but Bluesky shares do rather well and anytime a good article goes on Reddit, it usually explodes in views

• Tell folks about Braves Today, both a podcast and a newsletter that covers their Atlanta Braves every single day.

• If able, consider a subscription to the newsletter

Again, thanks to everyone who reads, watches, listens, comments, and shares. I do this first and foremost because I love the Atlanta Braves, but my enjoyment of this community we’ve built is right up there. Let’s keep it going.

Chop On!