𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝙽𝚈𝚃𝚒𝚖𝚎𝚜 𝙰𝚌𝚚𝚞𝚒𝚛𝚎𝚜 𝚆𝚘𝚛𝚍𝚕𝚎 𝙰𝚜 𝙸𝚝 𝙳𝚒𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚜𝚒𝚏𝚒𝚎𝚜 𝙰𝚠𝚊𝚢 𝙵𝚛𝚘𝚖 𝙽𝚎𝚠𝚜
The New York Times has acquired Wordle — the viral word game — for an "undisclosed price in the low seven figures", which makes Josh Wardle, the game's creator, a millionaire. The NYTimes also reported that it hit 10 million total subscribers.
For the NYTimes, buying Wordle makes a lot of sense. For the past few years, the newspaper has been trying to diversify its revenues away from just its "core news" product. Games (mostly word-based), a dedicated cooking section and audio stories have formed the bulk of its "stuff-that-isn't-news" segment, which has grown into a $22m-a-quarter business, more than 7x where it was just a few years ago. If that business was a scrappy start-up, it would almost certainly be a unicorn in today's market.
Wordle will initially remain free to new and existing players... the key word is "initially".
𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚝𝚛 | 𝙳𝚊𝚝𝚊 𝚂𝚝𝚘𝚛𝚢𝚝𝚎𝚕𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚐
