Sports Pub OutKick is Seeing Major Growth After Diving Into Trans Debate
By: Christiana Sciaudone
OutKick, a sports and culture media platform owned by Fox Corp., reported monthly unique visitors up 61% in October from September. The company attributes the rise to its following of the story of trans players in women’s sports, namely in this case, the participation of Blaire Fleming, born male, and playing on San Jose State University’s women’s volleyball team.
Mainstream media has tended to defend male-born players in women’s sports, making OutKick’s stance an unusual one. It’s a parallel to the larger news market that is largely served by a liberal-leaning media and was stunned by the reelection of Donald Trump in November.
“Anywhere that there’s an underserved clientele and you can serve that clientele and you can do a good job, you have a chance to do well,” Gary Schreier, senior vice president and managing editor at OutKick, told AMO. “That’s always been a great business model.”
It’s a similar situation to that of The Free Press, founded in 2021 by New York Times dissident Bari Weiss. The former editor, who was hired to bring centrists and conservative voices to the Times’ opinion pages after Donald Trump’s first election victory, famously quit with a scathing public letter that excoriated the paper of record for its ideological “tribalism.”
More than four years removed from her departure, Weiss and The Free Press—originally called Common Sense—have found incredible success on Substack by focusing “on stories that are ignored or misconstrued in the service of an ideological narrative.” Weiss told Axios earlier this month that The Free Press had 136,000 paid subscribers. The rate is $8 monthly and $80 annually.
The Numbers Are Growing
OutKick was founded in 2011 by Clay Travis, a lawyer turned sports writer, who, according to Axios, later “expanded his commentary to include politics, delivering conservative viewpoints that took his career to the next level.” He “downplayed” COVID and criticized government shutdown orders, and was eventually named a co-host of the radio program that replaced Rush Limbaugh’s show. Fox bought OutKick in 2021 for an undisclosed sum.
OutKick, whose coverage also includes betting and stories surrounding the social media of largely unclothed young women, reported 8.6 million total desktop and mobile unique visitors, up 61% versus the prior month and 44% year over year in October. In November, unique visitors increased 21% from a year earlier to 7.7 million. The platform also saw 32 million total multiplatform minutes, up 38% year over year, according to Comscore.
On Facebook, X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram, OutKick saw over 1.9 million social actions, up 27% versus the prior month and 119% versus October 2023, and over 19.7 million total video views on Facebook, X, and YouTube, up 36% versus the prior month and up 73% year over year, according to Shareablee. For November, social media actions exceeded 2.1 million, up 64% from a year earlier with 17.7 million total video views, up 94% year over year.
It’s not much of a surprise that more Americans are agreeing with the OutKick point of view. Last year, a Gallup poll found that 69% of Americans say transgender athletes should only be allowed to compete on sports teams that conform with their birth gender, up from 62% two years earlier. Fewer endorse transgender athletes being able to play on teams that match their current gender identity, at 26%, down from 34%.
Schreier insists he and the team have absolutely no problems with trans women or men, that they are not anti-trans by any means. He’s happy to provide space for all sides of the argument on OutKick, but said rarely does anyone from the other side accept an invitation to have a civil discourse.
“If you’re willing to have the discussion, you can learn—without name calling the minute that I don’t agree with you,” he said.
OutKick nonetheless is forging ahead, planning on adding talent and new products in 2025. As it stands, today they run over seven hours of programming every day.
“We don’t know what’s to come but we should be open to embrace it,” Schreier said. “As we move into the new year, OutKick has an opportunity to drive these conversations even further by staying true to who we are: smart, authentic and funny.”
