The New York Times is a Gaming Company

If you play Wordle or Connections, this might not be a huge surprise to you.

Maybe we should stop thinking of the New York Times as a news company. Here’s an interesting tweet from Matthew Ball which shows that more time is spent inside of the New York Times Games app than the New York Times News app.

And here’s another chart showing that the New York Times Games app is consistently among the most popular gaming apps in the Apple app store.

If you play Wordle, Connections or any of the other popular New York Times games like I do, this might not be a huge surprise to you.

It isn’t a new phenomenon, either.

In his tweet, Matthew makes an interesting point. He says that back when most people used to get copies of physical newspapers delivered to their homes, things like the comics section, crossword puzzles, and sports scores were a big reason why people subscribed to those newspapers.

It wasn’t just about news in and of itself, even back then.

Instead, newspapers were bundles of content that were monetized through a combination of subscriptions and ads.

For a long time, it was a great business model. But in the early days of the internet, the model didn’t work so well.

Many newspaper publishers struggled or went out of business because news could be obtained for free online, while most of the digital ad revenue was sucked up by the Google-Facebook advertising duopoly.

But the New York Times survived and even thrived by giving consumers content that they were willing to pay for, shifting its business model to one that put less emphasis on ads and more emphasis on subscriptions.

Advertising—which used to be how the New York Times made most of its money—is a shrinking portion of the company’s revenues, while subscriptions are on the rise.

Games fit nicely into the New York Times’ business model. By focusing on games, the company has been able to increase the value proposition of its subscription and make people more willing to pay for it.

It’s also helped the New York Times’ stock to recover close to its peak levels from 20 years ago, a time before the internet took off and when newspaper circulation and ad revenues were at their highest levels.