FanGraphs Membership Pricing Increases Next Week
Our Membership prices are increasing next week, making this is the last week to be grandfathered into our existing Membership prices, which as I noted when I announced our spring Membership Drive, will remain the same until at least 2023:
Starting June 1, we’re going to raise our prices from $50 to $60 for Ad Free Membership, from $20 to $25 for yearly Membership, and from $3 to $5 for monthly Membership. Please note: If you are an existing Member and maintain your Membership, your pricing will not change until at least 2023. Likewise, if you subscribe between now and June 1, you’ll be grandfathered in until at least 2023, just like our existing Members. This change will only go into effect starting on June 1 for new Members.
To answer a question we got a lot after announcing the impending new pricing, if you’re an existing Member and your Membership is set to renew after June 1, don’t worry: your pricing will also remain the same until at least 2023 as long as you maintain your Membership. We hope this reminder gives those of you who are on the fence about Membership enough time to take advantage of our existing pricing.
We think Membership is well worth your investment. Just since my last update, we’ve expanded our KBO stats offering, relaunched the FanGraphs Newsletter, and introduced the RosterResource Regular Season Transaction Tracker. We launched FanGraphs Membership in 2016, providing an ad-free option the year after that. Until now, we haven’t raised the price for either option. But while every piece you read and tool you use at the site is free to access, they all take time and money to create. As we navigate the post-COVID baseball media landscape, this is what we need to do to sustain and continue to grow the site.
So become a FanGraphs Member today and support all our work at the site. And thank you to all of our existing members!
David Appelman is the creator of FanGraphs.
As a long time reader, Fangraphs has helped me learn and notice new things about the game in every single article. Beginning in high school and continuing through college and beyond, it’s nurtured my love of the game. Thank you for that and I hope everyone who reads this will choose to support the site!!!
David,
Which is better for fangraphs:
a. I am a regular member, and leave ads on (unblocked)
b. I pay for an ad free membership
All I know is they get the best of both worlds with me. I have an ad-free membership, but since i always sign out of accounts, I also frequently visit Fangraphs for a quick read and never sign in, so they also get advertising dollars too.
Same. I’m signed in on my PC which I rarely use and never bother to reconnect from my phone which I check frequently. Lol
The ad-free membership is probably a bit better for them; CPM (Cost Per Mil, or 1000 impressions) for facebook ads is generally something like $10, and it’s probably less for fangraphs, and quite possibly a lot less (i.e. closer to $1 or less than $10). If it’s $10, then in theory 3000 page views might be enough to compensate, but again, I suspect it’s considerably less. Obviously, fangraphs has good reasons to not want to share precise details about the CPM of their existing advertisers.
3000 page views sounds pretty reasonable, and even 30,000 page views (in the $1 case) sounds plausible for a heavy user. In short, I suspect they’re not massively different but the ad-free membership is probably better for them because:
1) they get the money up-front! Cash flow is good!
2) the money is not tied to finding advertisers and convincing them to advertise and collecting payment from advertisers and everything else
3) this is a soft factor but a mutually respectful relationship with your audience, where they pay you good money and then you don’t serve them ads, is probably a more pleasant business model to work in than the alternative
Still a bargain. And even if it weren’t it’d still be worth supporting as there are no alternative sites like this one. Fact.