While online blog sites have actually been around for many years , The Athletic sees online layouts as a method to maintain target markets on its system, while protecting its reporting from getting scraped and repurposed by AI devices.

“The one thing that AI isn’t as efficient is the online experience. Therefore we can be that expert for you in the minute. People will always be faster,” said Sarah Goldstein, content supervisor at The Athletic.

At once when created material is progressively fueling AI solution engines, The Athletic is wagering that infusing video into its real-time blog writing is both stickier for followers– and much better protected. The publisher began including video clips to its online blog site feeds (which have actually been around because 2021 just last month, stated Laura Williamson, editorial director of The Athletic U.K. The Sports worked with Shaneika Dabney-Henderson as its initial international head of video last month.

“I’m conscious that in today’s AI world, the something [AI] can’t produce is [real-time] info. To make sure that push to damage information and nuggets of information– [such as] what you’re hearing, what you’re seeing– make it actually vivid. It comes alive,” Williamson claimed. “We don’t want play-by-play updates, since fans are seeing. They can see that. It’s what we can give them additional, efficiently, that we’re really thinking about. Or a little bit of character, a little bit of fun.”

The Athletic had an excellent 2025, in regards to website traffic development. The site had 16 9 million one-of-a-kind site visitors in January 2026, up 59 % year over year, according to Similarweb information.

But improvements in systems like retrieval augmented generation (RAG) suggest that AI search chatbots are getting better at bring real-time info published online. Dustcloth pipes can be wired to live feeds and information APIs for today details retrieval

It’s unclear if real-time protection and video clip truly is harder for AI bots to scrape. A recent report by TollBit found that some AI robot scrapes were even able to retrieve full variations of paywalled posts.

Burhan Hamid, co-founder of AI video clip ad system streamr.ai and previous CTO sometimes, was skeptical that online blogs and video clip are less vulnerable to AI scuffing.

“It relies on the robots.txt submits that [publishers] have. If they permit AI scratching, after that the crawlers will certainly scrape– despite content kind,” he claimed. “Anything searchable is discoverable by the representatives.” Then obviously there are those that flout robots.txt totally– 30 % of total AI bot scrapes in Q 4 2025 were scrapes that did not follow explicit robots.txt consents, according to TollBit’s record.

Nevertheless, David Caswell, creator of StoryFlow, a working as a consultant concentrated on AI workflows in information manufacturing, had a various viewpoint.

“Video is indeed more challenging and extra expensive to scrape, and to extract valuable semantic information from. This is why major web-scraping projects like Typical Crawl don’t consist of much video,” Caswell stated.

Nonetheless, The Athletic is betting that video and live blogs can elude the worst of the AI scuffing raging in the industry, with referral traffic continuing to decline on text posts — at the very least in the meantime.

About 20 press reporters will be adding video clips to the live blog sites at the Wintertime Olympics, and concerning 2 lots will certainly do so for Super Dish protection. Overall, there will have to do with 30 individuals at The Sports covering the Winter season Olympics, and 55 people covering the Super Bowl– with some on the ground and others covering from home, according to Goldstein and Williamson. Each real-time blog site has its own editor.

The Athletic has given training to press reporters that revealed passion in covering these sporting activities events with video, according to Williamson. Press reporters exercised by doing a few stand-ups (such as talking with the electronic camera to discuss what was happening during the NFL training camps last summer season), which after that increased to firing video clip at NFL interview– to obtain them comfy with chatting in front of an electronic camera and recording on the ground, Goldstein claimed.

These videos will additionally be dispersed on social networks systems, including Instagram, X, Bluesky and Facebook, Williamson said– to drive target markets to The Athletic’s online blog sites and other onsite protection.

For the Super Dish, reporters are being divvied up to target various subjects to shoot video for the real-time blog site feeds, Goldstein said. (The Athletic can not utilize game highlights or fire video in the stadium throughout the Super Bowl game, as media companies are restricted from doing so unless they belong to the official broadcast civil liberties owners or have explicit licensing take care of the NFL or its companions.)

Other authors are leaning into online feeds to involve viewers during huge sporting activities events this year. Last summer season, Vox Media’s sporting activities media network SB Country redesigned its website in an initiative to grow target market involvement– a large component of that was introducing dedicated “game strings,” its variation of online blog sites. This honest weekend SB Nation will certainly feed Super Dish coverage right into its Patriots and Seahawks feeds.

Other sports-focused publishers like NBC Sports and Yahoo Sports have been real-time blogging on major sporting activities events for years currently, and will organize these feeds for the Super Dish as well.

At the same time, The Athletic will generate a daily e-newsletter dedicated to the Winter months Olympics, which began on Feb. 6, in addition to various other networks to directly involve with readers that are not dependent on search for web content exploration, like real-time push notifications

The Athletic has over 10 million customers across its slate of 11 e-newsletters, up from 5 million in May 2025, according to a representative at The Athletic. Its flagship e-newsletter “The Pulse” has 4 4 million customers. The Athletic’s Olympics coverage is funded by brand names like Amazon, Deloitte and Jeep, they added.

“The greatest thing is simply trying to reveal everyone what it’s like to be here and belong to that moment,” Goldstein claimed. “Not everyone wishes to sit and check out a complete story. Not everyone has time. However you do have time to become smarter in a 90 -2nd video. Or as you’re enjoying the game, if you have a concern concerning something, a real-time blog is mosting likely to aid address that.”