Why We’re Moving Our Articles to a Metered Paywall
Beginning today, we’ll be moving our articles on both FanGraphs and RotoGraphs to a metered paywall. Readers will get 10 free articles per rolling 30 days; if you go over that and would like to continue reading, you’ll be required to become a FanGraphs Member.
Our player pages, leaderboards, and other data tools, as well as RosterResource, The Board, and our glossary, will remain available for unlimited use to all of our readers.
FanGraphs Membership now includes:
- Ad-free browsing
- Unlimited FanGraphs and RotoGraphs articles
- One-click data exports
- Customizable player page dashboards
- Dark mode and classic mode page styles
- Leaderboard custom reports
- Optional removal of photos on the homepage
When I think about where FanGraphs sits in today’s media landscape, there are a lot of things that make us an outlier. We are a 100% independent small business that has 14 full-time employees. Everyone who does any work for FanGraphs receives compensation. We don’t focus on chasing clicks. We don’t participate in SEO schemes. We don’t work with sportsbooks or gambling entities. We are a baseball site staffed by baseball experts for baseball fans and experts.
Unfortunately, we’re still very much reliant on programmatic advertising dollars, which you may remember being the focus of a post of mine earlier this year. Whether because of the 2020 pandemic, the 2022 lockout, 2023 search engine changes, or 2024 changes in ad tech, advertising revenue is unpredictable and unreliable. It makes business planning and hiring challenging, and leaves us vulnerable to revenue fluctuations that have nothing to do with the quality of our content or site tools. It isn’t transparent, its presence on the site creates a poor user experience that’s difficult for us to quality control, and it exploits your data to take revenue out of the hands of small publishers and put it in the coffers of the largest, most profitable companies in the world.
FanGraphs turns 20 years old next year. It has taken decades of work from dozens of people who have given their days, nights, weekends, and vacation time to build this site. For an independent single-sport site, the range and depth of content available at FanGraphs is truly special. We hope that these changes will help us further secure the site’s future long-term. Thank you to all of our Members for helping us get this far. Every time we have faced a decline in advertising revenue over the last five years, it has been our Members who have sustained FanGraphs and helped it grow. And if you aren’t yet a Member, there’s no need to wait until you hit your 10 article limit — you can become one now and help us continue to improve the site, just as we have these past 19 years.
Please let us know if you have any questions, either by leaving a comment below or by emailing support@fangraphs.com.
David Appelman is the creator of FanGraphs.
Fangraphs is the best website I spend money on. Proud to be a member and support this site.
I agree! Thanks for the great work and keeping us posted on the business side of the site.
Hear hear!
Agreed. In fact, I use the resources of FG so frequently that I sometimes feel guilty about how little I pay for an annual membership. Consequently, when I have an opportunity, I gift a year’s membership to a friend. My goal is to build the community. That extra membership means approximately one fewer night out for dinner during the year.
agreed. well worth it to support content of this quality.
Came here basically to say this.
Will distribute some holiday gift memberships this offseason.
Happy to be a member and will continue to be one. I hope your membership drive is successful. It would be devastating to lose your content. Best of luck!
Happy to pay for the great work on this site!!
Worth it
Already a member but I encourage anyone on the fence to give it a try. Best baseball site on the web.
I should have found a way to scrounge up the money for this a while ago, but this is the kick in the pants I needed.
Can’t afford a membership today, but will happily pay for one when that changes. 10 free articles is also very generous compared to most metered reading I’ve encountered. Love the site and I applaud this move away from ad reliance and a hopefully more stable website revenue.
Been a member for 4 years and counting. It’s been worth every penny!
Why not the other way around? I’d be totally willing to pay for the leaderboards, stats, player pages etc. I do not feel particularly inclined to pay for articles.
yep–quality of the writing has really fallen off in recent years
#WouldPayForNotGraphs
I’m opposite. The FG writers are the best in the trade, and the stats have real competition from BR, StatCast, etc. Happy to pay because otherwise our options are limited to ad-heavy MLB self promotion or team-specific inside joke blogs.
I basically don’t read the standard/filler daily articles anymore, I just skip to see sadtrombone’s comments, which are usually good at driving discussion. I already dropped my membership because I wasn’t happy with the value prop, this just pushes me further away from reconsidering. But this is a calculated move, FG knows that some will sub and others won’t bother and thinks trade off is worth it.
Plus, 10 articles a month means I can still view all the prospect lists since they take 8 months to finish anyway…
Hear that David? I add value! Next time I ask for some help with my slide I expect you to step up!
Your comments are going behind the paywall next!
Honestly? Discussing stuff with you is half the reason I come here anymore too, the other half is the site content xD
Aww, you’re making me emotional. Gonna have to clear my spit valve.
Awesome, you membered up!
I don’t always agree with your comments, but I do always appreciate your engagement.
I search for @sadtrombone as well! But, get this, I came across one that really didn’t age well the othre day:
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/its-difficult-to-exaggerate-aaron-judges-power/
There are now features on the player pages and leaderboards that require Membership. We want data to be available to everyone, but how you get that data and how you customize it is something that will continue to be made available for Members only.
While I understand from a buyers standpoint that this is “paying” for articles. When you buy a FanGraphs Membership, you are supporting the entirety of the site. The stats pages wouldn’t exist without Members, the articles wouldn’t exist without Members.
Sure – I’m a member on principle!
I actually agree. I am a member because I want to support the site, but I find many articles so full of random cultural references that they feel like a Family Guy episode. It’s too bad, because it really obscures some great research and hypothesis testing.
“He hit that ball harder than the wall falling on Buster Keaton in Steamboat Bill Jr.!”
I’ve been happy to pay for a sub since it became clear in 2020 that Fangraphs needed the money.
As someone who adblocks the internet, I’m happy to see websites being able to support themselves without ads.
Easiest $60 I’ve ever spent.
I subscribed to FanGraphs in 2020 during the pandemic to show some support, have kept my membership active since, and will continue to do so. You’re indispensable, and I have nothing but the utmost respect for the work the team here produces, David. We at MLBTR love FanGraphs, and I’ll always support the analysis and tools you guys provide. All the best to you and the team. Keep up the excellent work.
Why not put your database behind the paywall ? That’s where your real value is. That’s the content that people will pay for.
I doubt more people will pay for articles if they aren’t already paying.
Because then people will use Baseball Reference. While I prefer Fangraphs and would probably pay for it, it would quickly lose relevancy and probably shut down if the player pages went behind a paywall.
Lately ads have become so intrusive on here that I can’t even look at a player’s stat page without a flyer taking up my entire screen and no amount of tapping and scrolling will make it go away. Oh well, I’ll just fire up adblocker on my PC, and then use BB-Ref when I’m on my phone!
Much like Playboy, the articles are an attraction but not the main attraction.
However, unlike Nudegraphs, I think the articles would actually be the only attraction. I would just rather not know what the writers here look like at, ah, leisure.
OnlyFangraphs, surely?
I could send pics
*breathlessly increases membership tier*
Disagree. I love the articles– they’re the differentiator.
I for one definitely come to fangraphs for the articles, not the database. Baseball reference is more user friendly for me.
It depends what you’re looking for. If I’m looking for someone’s career stats or historical info or want some HOF measuring tools, including JAWS, B-R is the place to go…but, for in-season leaders & the ability to do splits & certain time frames,etc. Fangraphs is better.
BRef including award wins and votes for each player is the one thing I love there that I wish were here. If it were, I’d never go to BRef again (I absolutely loathe how they do pitching WAR).
The awards column on BRef player pages would be a neat feature, I’m just not sure if that’d be stepping on their toes a bit? Including bold on league-leading stats as BRef does would be cool too, though maybe as a feature users could toggle on/off.
Another feature BRef has that I wish FG included was defensive position in Minor League game logs. Not a huge deal, but as prospects near MLB promotions it can be illustrative of where teams are going to deploy them. Could be useful for fantasy purposes too.
Anyway, FanGraphs is the best and 19 years might as well be 100 in Internet terms. Well done to all who have kept it thriving.
Longtime lurker but signed up for membership for this month. Totally loving it so far, especially the amazing work by the writers.
I signed up as soon as membership became ab option years ago. I bought a second membership I dont use just to support. This is my best money spent year after year. Fangraphs really brightened my days when they werent so bright themselves, and my life is much better for it. Not just the baseball stats, but the personalities of the writers. Perhaps if enough folks sign up we can get back NotGraphs??? 🙂
As a fellow member from day one (or at least week 1), I can’t help but sheepishly admit that I’d like a “member since X” designation so I could get some internet clout here.
But seriously, I love this site and supporting it is an easy decision. I’ve said this before, but it comes out to definitely less than $0.25 an hour for the time I spend here, reading articles and looking up all manner of stats every time I get a weird itch to find something.
Just saying, I would pay extra for suped up minor league leaderboards and reports
Dangit! I used one of my 10 on this article
First: I will absolutely consider subscribing, and don’t blame you at all for this change.
Second: The amount of background requests made to ad networks (I assume) on the site is absurd. I have never seen a site that does as much. It literally crashes my web browser (on a fairly powerful computer) if I try to visit it without using an ad-blocker, and I believe I’ve seen others make similar complaints. I encourage everyone to look at the network tab in your browser’s devtools panel to see the insanity (if you know what I’m talking about).
I’ll be honest when I say I’m conflicted and it simultaneously makes me want to subscribe and not subscribe.
All the ads are removed with Membership, so this is a non-issue for Members. Like I said, problems with programmatic advertising are one of the main reasons for this change. We want users to have a better experience, and we want a more sustainable business model.
Thanks, that makes a lot of sense. And just to confirm – when you say all ads are you removed, does this include not only visible ads on the screen but also all of the tracking stuff going on in the background?
We still run Google analytics and Clicky for site metrics, but I don’t believe we’re running any external site metric services otherwise.
I guess with the most recent Google antitrust suit, we might consider removing Google analytics for Members, or maybe entirely since GA4 is pretty terrible (though it wouldn’t impact user experience in any way), but we use Clicky for certain site operations, so it’s not particularly realistic to remove.
Bottom line is, we’re not selling any user data, or anonymized user data, or aggregated user data.
Great, thanks for the transparency. And to be clear, I’m not overly concerned with the selling of data (and definitely not whatever you’re using for analytics) – I know that most of the other sites we’re all visiting do it too. It’s just that it got to the point where it was affecting the browser.
The ad traffic isn’t anything different to other major sites that utilize video ads. Your PC’s specs isn’t really relevant to browser crashing due to advertising.
It absolutely is. The issue is not the actual ads that are served, it’s all of the requests being made in the background to (what I assume are) track the users. Any other site that I’ve seen pales in comparison in terms of the number and frequency of the background network requests.
And the PC specs are absolutely relevant – if the browser is crashing due to it then the amount of memory you have (and to a much lesser extent, the CPU) plays a huge factor.
I built the blacklist for the request blocker I use by hand, based on what I observed Fangraphs sending. I 100% could reproduce this – with the ad-blocker off, Fangraphs would consistently crash my browser (technically it would freeze it and make it unresponsive for several minutes at least). No issues with the blocker on, and no issues on any other site with the blocker on or off.
Also I want to be clear – I don’t think Fangraphs is doing anything nefarious – I just assumed that they went overboard in signing up for these networks in a (completely justified) attempt to gain a bit a revenue.
While the ad issue has been difficult to track down, because it’s not always reproducible, and not everyone experiences it, we believe the issue is a memory leak in prebid.js that becomes a big problem with ad refreshes on single page apps with long page times.
We don’t really have a solution, and that particular memory leak doesn’t seem to be getting a lot of attention. The typical FanGraphs user will spend a lot more time on FanGraphs than other sites.
We might offload some stuff to server side prebid in an attempt to make less calls, but really what we’re doing is relatively standard ad stuff. GAM + Prebid + Video Player, nothing out of the ordinary. It’s used by literally every site.
Comparing this site to CNN you’ll see the same kind of traffic to ad services, especially when video ads are running. Every major site that relies on advertising is like this, there’s no difference in the traffic.
The point I was trying to make about PC specs isn’t that it can’t effect your browsing, but if what you say is true that you have a “fairly powerful computer” then the specs of your PC are irrelevant and likely points to the cause being browser related. If your browser is crashing visiting this site in a single tab then there’s something wrong with that browser regardless of what your PC specs are.
I can run MS Edge with no addons and tracking protection disabled and visit this page with my network adblock disabled and it consumes at most 1 GB of memory. I’m not saying you don’t have issues, but that those issues aren’t necessarily related to this site’s advertising alone.
I have also always had a problem with ads crashing my browser on fangraphs, and no other site. Phone and PC. This is a real thing that is unique to fangraphs and it affects a lot of people. It’s the reason I stopped being a member. It’s never been addressed in at least 5 years since I first emailed them about it. It’s too bad, I used to come here a lot.
Members don’t have ads. Perhaps you were a basic member prior to all Memberships being ad free, but if that was your issue with membership before, it’s been solved.
Every time I open Fangraphs is a high point in my day. Life wouldn’t be the same without this great place to talk baseball with knowledgeable fans and enjoy the articles and the chats.
I was going to say something like this too. I never thought I would enjoy a website this much, but I love it.
Worth the price of admission, every time.
“Secure the site’s future long-term” is music to my ears. Happy to be a member to support.
PS – I’ll buy a 2nd membership if you can convince Sullivan to come back.
2nd’d
I love this site, and I don’t mind the ads w/my sub, so maybe there’s a new ad-free sub tier that costs more? Def don’t want FG to lose out on rev.
You shouldn’t be seeing any ads as a Member. Send a note to support@fangraphs.com with a screenshot and I can take a look to see if there’s some sort of problem with your account.
Now that’s some customer service.
Thanks for the best site on the internets, stay classy FanGraphs <3
If you don’t already, Subscribe! An amazing website well worth the small fee.
Proud to be a member, y’all
With everything else going on I can’t afford to pay to read baseball articles so I guess I won’t be coming here any more. While I enjoy looking at the leaderboards and projected standings, I really enjoy the chats and the articles – the ZIPs projections and the hall of fame write ups especially. Only being able to read one article every three days will just be too frustrating, so I’ll not be coming back. It was fun while it lasted.
See you tomorrow
Everyone’s financial situation is different, and I don’t think anyone would say a subscription to read about sports is anything but a luxury good. I fully believe Dave would love to provide all this for free to you (and everyone), but that’s not realistic either.
Sometimes you just have to drop stuff you like. Maybe you’ll find yourself in a better finances later and can come back!
I’m out of work right now and I have a lot of medical debt, so right now I can’t afford the $10 a month. I’ll still use up my free articles, but honestly this seriously just bummed me out that I’ll be limited to 3-4 articles a week for now. Been a daily reader since about 2007-2008, literally read every article available. But once I’m able to pay, I’ll do so immediately. Fangraphs has become a bane of my existence, I’ve had an article posted under the community section (and fangirled the hell out when I found this out), so I have such an immensely deep connection with this glorious website. I guess I’ll have to do til I’m able to pay.
And just an fyi, I’m not holding any ill feelings towards FG for this decision. Totally get why you guys’ are doing this.
Is there a “gift subscription” option? Maybe something the site could add. Fuck medical debt
There is. I know this because a family member who knows my very niche and obscure interests very well decided to get me a subscription for my birthday, not knowing that I already subscribe. Oops! Just go to the shop.
There is 😬
“Fangraphs has become a bane of my existence.”
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Yep, a “bane” represents a cause of great distress or annoyance. Maybe if he was strapped to a chair and forced to memorize all the sabermetric formulas on this site…
I don’t think using the word once constitutes it as continuing to use that word but I honestly don’t know what the hell I was thinking using that word there 🤣
It is…conceivable…that he was making a Princess Bride reference
Somehow I had no idea that my membership had lapsed. Just signed up for the recurring 3-year. Hope this model works for you folks and the great content keeps coming for years.
That memberships CAN lapse and not auto-renew with no awareness is such a good thing, IMO 🙂
It was a voluntary payment to a free, ad-supported website that I wanted to see survive at a time when the near-term future of sports was unclear. I wasn’t paying for perks or bonus features.
Now it’s a less-than-$5/month charge for content I enjoy.
Either way, I’m happy to pay it.
There should be a membership tier that automatically converts Jay Jaffe’s JAWS system to fwar (joking)
Unless…
👀
Only reason I’m not a member rn is bc I’m broke af and I’m happy for ten. I do love the sport and the site so onea these days!
Been a member for years, and as someone who runs their own subscription driven niche site, I 100% get it. Good luck!
I had been putting off subscribing – this was the push I needed! Just signed up to become a member.
Newest member brings Ring Dings and Pepsi to the monthly meeting
Dammit!
I don’t agree with everything on the website but having it without Ads is nice. I take more of a middle ground with Analytics vs Scouting. While its great to know the stats to see trends you can’t take that to the mound or plate with you. Make the adjustments during practice or in the video room before games. Athletes and Coaches need to react in real time not over think their next move.
The best articles on the internet. Period.
10 articles/30 days is generous, more generous than any other paywall I can remember seeing
Yeah, really great, and also enough to let people really get a feel for the variety they’re missing the rest of the time.
Happy to be a member. I paid for Baseball Prospectus until a period of time where most of their articles seemed aimed at people who think “is a hot dog a sandwich” is an interesting question. I felt excluded (I remember Mantle/Maris) and I didn’t renew. I’m glad that you’ve kept the focus on baseball all these years.
I think this makes sense overall. I first subscribed in 2020 when advertising on the internet was no longer a functional business model, but I suspect over time the PBS-style pledge drives lost some (or most) of its effectiveness.
Fangraphs clearly needed to do something to convert more people into membership–before, there were too few incentives to sign up. And there needed to still be enough articles so that people could see what they are missing and to fall in love with the site. I worry a little bit that the 10-article limit won’t be enough to convert people into signing up, that maybe you would need 12 or 15 articles to win people over instead before cutting them off. But it is likely that Fangraphs–with all of the access to the analytics and how frequently people logging in and checking articles–have put this exact number in place for a reason.
In any case, I’m happy to see any change that moves the site towards greater sustainability. I think this change makes a lot of sense.
I kind of agree with this – a lot of the people who become members check the site daily and read many or even most of the articles. There is such variety in what is covered by the articles it may take a more regular reading cadence than 1 article every 3 days to get someone to see and enjoy all the content available.
I became a member in 2020 when Fangraphs started to voice their sustainability concerns, and I’d gladly pay more – I get more out of this subscription than something like ESPN+ which costs twice as much. I also want to ensure FG can retain its wonderful writers as long as possible (selfish, I know – I just miss reading some of the greats that have graced this site over the years!).
I also think David its good to remind people to become members, and the benefits of it, pretty frequently, as there are probably some low hanging fruit readers out there, as some of these comments suggest.
We’ve pretty much avoided doing all the usual membership “tactics”, but I think it’s possible something like a free trial could help in this regard. We’re less than 3 hours into the change, so it will take a little while to figure out if we have a problem having readers become Members after they’ve hit the 10 article limit.
Yeah, I kind of feel like there needs to some intermediate step. 10 articles is perfect for people who come here occasionally, but then a free trial to let them binge for a month or two and get it in their daily routine would be a good idea.
I had originally thought 15 would be enough to address the binging stage, but I like the idea of a free trial better. The only problem is I’m not sure how you prevent people from repeatedly signing up for free trials. I’m sure internet businesspeople have already worked this out, but since I’m not I don’t know what it is.
Tactics idea. I think what you should do is make the site free for the two weeks before opening day, and spend all that time in membership-drive mode. Post a lot of those articles about ads versus member revenue, explaining who you are and what you value.
Good luck, and peace be with you.
Fangraphs has had some of the best, and unbiased, articles in all of sports for the past 20 years.
Unfortunately, earlier this year I came across an article which omitted and twisted facts in order to support a point (which was easy to make without these tactics). I was surprised as I’d never seen this before on fangraphs and checked who wrote the article – unfortunately it was a writer I recognized from other places who had a history of this kind of thing (very talented and experienced writer otherwise).
Since then I’ve found myself sparsely coming to fangraphs for articles, and always checking the writer first (still use the tools often). Please make sure everyone understands the standards you’ve upheld for so long (I posted a comment on the article but it never went through somehow).
Thanks for the hard work these past 20 years and I hope you guys make it another 20+.
What was the article?
Clearly cloning Adam Dunn was twisting the facts (https://not.fangraphs.com/dangerous-experiment-a-roster-of-25-adam-dunns/)
what was the article?
If I said the article it would expose the writer, which perhaps is warranted, but not my intention. I posted to make sure Appelman is aware there’s an issue – hopefully he saw the article and addressed it already (my inability to post in the comments on that 1 article was interesting – never had that come up before). These things are pretty common nowadays for shock-jocks and click-chasers, just not on Fangraphs and I hope it doesn’t become common.
Fangraphs has some great writers, but one bad apple can sour the pie. Writing aside, Fangraphs is still a great site, so there’s plenty to offer everyone aside from the articles.
One of the first sites I open. Every. Single. Day. Reading FanGraphs has made me a better baseball fan, and (maybe?) pays for itself in incremental fantasy winnings.
Keep up the great work!!
Just signed up. Kinda embarrassed I hadn’t done so already. Thank you David and the rest of the FanGraphs team for the incredible work you all do!
Very much appreciate the site and the work you guys do, have been a member since the Dave Cameron days (at least it seems like?)
I feel like I’ve been here since the Kirk Cameron days, if not the Captain Kirk days…
I gladly pay for my membership and will continue to do so. It’s 100% worth it.
Signing up for a Fangraphs membership if you frequent this site regularly is analogous to putting your cart back at the grocery store.
While I’m sure some people will be disappointed, to me, this makes all the sense in the world. I’ve been an ad-free member since the day it was an option, and I will continue to happily support the high quality of one of the best baseball sites out there.
Happy to support this excellent business for a couple lattes a month! Love the community, the commentary, the design – solid value prop and I’ll be subscriber for life.
I’ve been a reader since 2010 and a member since 2013 in the Fangraphs+ days. It’s the only site I subscribe to and has paid for itself many times over. I’ve probably read thousands of articles and seen even more in player pages. Fangraphs has always been there for deep, complex analysis when I needed some baseball content when I was taking a break from school and now when I need a break during the work day. It was an amazing value in the $4.99 per year days, but still even at the current price point, the content remains the best in the business and I’ll continue subscribing for as long as I’m able.
Fine, but let’s focus on the important issues.
Lindor for MVP.
I’m from Sweden and found this website a little more than 10 years ago. I’m a member. I use the site almost daily. The articles are very readable and all of you who work with the site do a fantastic job! Thanks Jesper
Happy to be a member, happy to gift. You guys do great work and deserve to be paid for it.
A Fangraphs subscription is worth its weight in Gold. I’m happy to continue to subscribing.
I’m really glad you’re doing this. Fangraphs is a daily go-to site for me.
We count on you to deliver great stats and analysis, and you should be able to count on us, the readers, to support it.
Proud member here who will keep on renewing, and encouraging others to join.
So, I’m completely supportive of moving to a paywall system and feel Fangraphs is more than justified in doing so, however, as someone that is concerned for the overall health of the site, I wonder if it’s the best business decision. 10 free articles a month is a lot. I’m sure Fangraphs has a lot more data that what I can see from my general observations but, at least according to the comments, it appears that the majority of the regulars are already members. I question whether there’s a large enough demographic that views 10+ articles per month that will be willing to pay the membership fee, especially now that their experience just got better in some ways as even non-members don’t have ads anymore. I very well could be wrong as I’m no expert here, but I would think limiting it to 3-5 articles per month might be more beneficial.
And it might not be a bad thing to make certain articles members only. I imagine the Top 100 Prospects list would drive a ton of membership. I say this as someone that has paid for membership at other sites for that primary purpose.
Non-members still see ads. We didn’t get rid of them, we’re just trying to decrease our reliance on them.
I have a membership, but now I won’t be able to read the articles via RSS, so I will probably cancel my membership because I’m not reading them otherwise.
There was a time some swag would come with a membership. If I could get a mug or T-shirt with a sub that’d put me over.
Oh and a way to save articles in the app or website please!
Can I get a shirt with my membeship?
I haven’t been coming here as much this yer, but not any of your fault. I’m a White Sox fan and my team sucks so bad, I just can’t baseball. So, as with most things in life, blame Jerry?
Yes
Already a member just because I felt guilty with how much I use the site. So this news is just a relief that I don’t have to do anything different. And it’s a bit of a relief because I was always worried how you all made money
How strong does membership need to be to #bringbackNotGraphs?
It’s tough for me. The user experience has been absolutely atrocious the last couple years trying to navigate the site. And part of this change feels like “annoy your casual customers into either paying or leaving”. I use adblockers for nearly all my browsing but whitelisted FG so you folks would still get some revenue from me. But it’s been far from pleasant.
I’ll echo a fairly common complaint. Having prospect lists trickling out over 9 months is awful. Like a lot of folks I’m here because I play deep dynasty fantasy and we routinely trade guys in the FV35+ range. Having every other source publishing full team lists before Opening Day and then seeing FG trickle them out past the All-Star break makes FG a less useful source of information. In-season should be about in-season updates not “here’s the Pirates preseason list in late June”. Converting folks from free users to paid users would be easier if you were as timely as your competitors.
As someone not affiliated with FanGraphs but who has been paid to do prospect analysis for 20+ years, I’ll tell you the dirty little secret that most prospect lists are written by people who don’t actually watch 95% of the prospects. For instance, before the season Keith Law insisted that Jackson Holliday was a better defensive shortstop than Gunnar Henderson when anyone who saw Jackson in the minors last year knew that he is not yet a Major League quality shortstop.
So the frequently updated lists that you see on other sites are usually stats-based, because evaluating that many prospects takes a lot of time. I would spend around 100 hours watching film just to do an article on the first round of the NFL draft. For baseball, I go to see as many games in person as I can, then look up videos on MiLB and YouTube when I can’t, and despite that I can’t come close to the amount of coverage that Eric Longenhagen provides.
While I don’t always agree with his takes, I find his prospect coverage extremely valuable because it is based on direct observation rather than just looking at metrics or recycling someone else’s comments. That’s why his rankings can vary substantially from other outlets. Realistically, there is no way that this site can write up ~1000 prospects within two months, as they just don’t have enough time or people to complete such a massive task in a short period of time. But the prospects content that you do get here is more insightful and valuable than the quicker stuff you might find elsewhere. And who knows, if enough people become members then maybe they could add staff to speed things up a bit.
Have you guys ever considered allowing Apple News+ post your articles? I found that 90% of what I want to read is available on their subscription site and I much prefer that model rather than having to pay 20 sites because it’s easier and cheaper.
Obviously you don’t get the same amount of money but it opens you up to massive readership too
Why should Apple get a cut? It might just be because I don’t use a ton of different sites for entertainment, but I can handle dishing out cash individually for the subs I care about.
Think of it this way — if it’s cheaper to go Apple News+ and you know they are taking their cut — that’s definitely less than a direct sub.
Of course it’s less but then there’s a huge universe of people who use Apple and might find fangraphs. I read about 40 outlets on Apple from things like UK newspapers to Wall Street Journal to local papers from places I have lived to really esoteric stuff I’ve found. I dropped some things I was paying for and added a bunch of stuff I’d never Pay for. It’s awesome and no ads.
This place is tremendously valuable. I became a member years ago. I’ve found nowhere else on the Internet provides this much value for the buck–at any site. Please consider membership. They need the money and they provide so much.
I’ll be paying the moment work picks up; I love the site, and honestly completely understand the changes. I think the paywall is broadly going on the right stuff. And 10 articles before it hits is much nicer than pretty much anywhere else online.
This site is worth it a million times over!
“This site is worth it a million times over!”
Then you can pay for…all of us
I don’t know if this is something you would be able to do, but it seems to me that non-article posts should be exempt from the limit. I’m thinking posts tagged “site news, podcasts, job postings” that sort of thing. Maybe you already thought of that, or maybe it just isn’t do-able since they are all in the same blogroll as everything else.
Fangraphs literally got me my dream job in the industry (both directly and indirectly.) I’ll be a member for life.
Was wondering how much longer you’d hold out. Now I know. Does it make me a bit sad. Yes. Fangraphs was a wonderful free resource and I loved linking articles on message boards and in e-mails to people who never knew it existed. But I’ve been a member for a few years already, and this change doesn’t affect my enjoyment (and it IS very enjoyable and informative). I suppose it was inevitable given the general economic trends in on-line publishing. So, it’s sad in one sense, but it’s just in another sense: good work should be rewarded, and when necessary, paid for.
Keep on keepin on. Thank you for everything.
Will live chats still be free?
I read pretty much all the articles (probably 4/5 weekday + Sunday Notes) and dip into RotoGraphs maybe once a week (mostly for Mining the News).
So let’s call it 22 articles a week * 52 weeks a year (there’s a week or two in there where everyone is on vacation and the “best of” articles run, but by that time I’m ready to re-read them).
So 1144 articles/yr @ $60/yr => $0.05 / article.
Best.
Deal.
Ever.
Now, for my feature request:
I want a membership tier (let’s say $15/mo, equivalent to $0.15/article), where the only feature is an additional badge, next to “member”, which says, idk, “bringbacknotgraphs”.
There are a lot of reasons why I’ve been a member since it became an option. (Does anyone else miss Carson’s “liberating one from the tyranny of advertising”?) The unusual aspects that you listed fit with the thoughtful, human writing of Fangraphs. Thank you, David, for continuing to figure out to run Fangraphs as you have.
We are a 100% independent small business that has 14 full-time employees. Everyone who does any work for FanGraphs receives compensation. We don’t focus on chasing clicks. We don’t participate in SEO schemes. We don’t work with sportsbooks or gambling entities. We are a baseball site staffed by baseball experts for baseball fans and experts.
And for my folks looking for a little extra perk in addition to the wonderful content, membership has a Dark Mode feature!! As someone who burns the midnight oil on my giant monitors, flipping to dark mode at night is amazingggg.
FanGraphs membership has been some of the best money I’ve spent
I think this is great news! Ads are a scourge on society so anything that leads to less reliance on them is a win in my book! Hopefully this makes things more stable on the business end for you.
I only regret that it took this move to remind me to finally subscribe.
Proud to be a member and support the site I love!
I don’t pay for stuff online unless it truly offers something unique and adds value. I pay for Fangraphs.
I was an early subscriber (member # in the low hundreds) when BP went to the subscriber model. I loved those early days with Joe and Christina and Rany… Well, all of it. And I’ve always felt the same here in the last few years. I supported during Covid but let it lapse. I’ll be subscribing again because while I like most sports, baseball is my jam. And this site is the best.
I love Fangraphs. Thank you for the quality baseball content. It’s the only place I go.
I’ve been following this website for more than 15 years. I can easily say this is the best website geared towards sports.
Pay for as the insightful takes. Stay for the in-depth statistical database. FanGraphs is a bargain at almost any price!
10 article free per rolling month is a lot. Fangraphs is the baseball site I trust the most and it’s an easy renewal for me each year
This very pleased multi-year subscriber encourages all readers to join!
If it will help, tell me what tier I need to add to my current membership so that I can continue reading the articles after I’ve passed.
Anyone paying attention should obviously see that Fangraphs didn’t want to do this. If you’re mad, you should direct that anger at the Internet media landscape or maybe just society, but anger towards a site that clearly tried forever to be free to anyone, is just wrong. I wanted Fangraphs to be free to everyone forever, but I want it to exist more. I do legitimately feel for those who aren’t in a financial position to subscribe.
While there is sure to be pearl clutching about this from people who pay for bath water of OF models, I am proud to say this is my first MLB season as a member of FG paid and I haven’t regretted it for a moment. I had a personal reason (auction calculator exports for a very serious roto league) for doing it, but it’s been a great daily web visit for me and has been enhanced by a membership. Bravo.
Does this article count for comedy purposes?
I read some of the articles, but too many are chock full of cultural references that aren’t necessary. I am a member because I want to support the continued existence of the stats and prospect rankings.
This is going to sound weird, but I think having notifications about replies to one’s comments would actually drive more engagement and get people to read more articles. Some of the best discussion happens in the comments, but I almost never know because I never go back to old articles to see if anyone has replied to me.
Appreciate the article to explain the changes and appreciate all the work you and others continue to do for FanGraphs. Since I started paying for membership, I have never regretted it, and I feel less guilty about using the site. I’m definitely in favor of subscriptions instead of advertising, as the latter definitely ruins the experience. I hope you can continue to find new, reliable sources of income to keep this going and growing forever. I would stop paying StatHead if FanGraphs had more data, more custom table options, et cetera. It would be nice to have everything in one place. For example, I don’t understand why one cannot choose extra base hits, total bases, or GIDP opportunities (among many others). It would be great if we could also easily find answers to questions like: how often was a Juan Soto walk followed by a double play where he was one of the outs? Or how often has Jose Ramirez been the first batter to face a new pitcher? I know the answer is to get the play-by-play data and figure it out myself, but growing up in America has made me long for convenience 🙂
Deciding not to paywall RR is very generous to non-members imo. There’s nothing else like it out there. Bringing Jason on board was such a smart call.
Happy to pay (and already was) for a site I use everyday
The subscription is worth it. Particularly since, as the article mentioned, this site has managed to avoid associating itself with the gambling ads that have taken over nearly every other sports-related website or video. I hope to never see the day when FanGraphs falls victim to their dollars.
About time. Quality writing has a cost.
Fangraphs is literally the best resource a baseball fan has, i happily pay every month
I wish the price were a bit lower – as someone who is retired and has limited discretionary income for things like FG . Every year I have to decide which baseball sites to subscribe to.
Well worth it!
FanGraphs 4lyfe.
First time member this year. Have loved Fangraphs since I got into fantasy baseball and took a high school stats class. You all do the best work on the internet and proud to support!