Bloomberg Turns Its Eyes to the World With Global Growth Ambitions

Bloomberg Media’s CEO Justin Smith left earlier this year to launch a global news publication called Semafor with former BuzzFeed News head honcho Ben “Unrelated” Smith.

But the company he left behind is not going to let him run away with the idea. According to Axios, Bloomberg is plotting a rollout of in-depth local coverage in areas with relatively high GDP (read: people with money to pony up for subscriptions), including an eye on international expansion in France, Germany, Japan, Malaysia, and Africa as early as later this year.

Business Clawed from Abroad

Bloomberg has already launched new verticals around niche areas like “Bloomberg Green,” “Crypto”, auto-focused “Hyperdrive,” and health care-minded “Prognosis.” That’s helped bring the publication, best known for its core business coverage, incredibly close to its goal of 400,000 paid subscribers, according to Axios, while it’s already ticked off its other goal of $100 million worth of annual consumer subscription revenue.

Bloomberg Media’s forays into new markets will consist of varying strategies. Some will compete for scoops directly with local publications by hiring talent, just as Bloomberg did in the UK. Others will involve partnerships with local media, such as Southern European vertical Bloomberg Adria, which works with Serbian broadcaster Mtel Swiss. The wider geographic footprint would add to an overall strategy to boost profits and blunt exposure to subscriber churn:

• A new report from tech research company Piano found that 43% of digital media subscribers stop using their subscription one day after they subscribe, compared to 39% in 2021. For obvious reasons, they almost always cancel when they realize they have a subscription they’re not using and accounted for 30% of cancellations among over 500 publications studied.
• Bloomberg Media’s revenue is up 24% in the first six months of 2022. An expanding events business and a 24/7 global news network, Quicktake, are among the fastest growing new earners, giving Bloomberg a more robust business outside its core media services.

One Would Hope: Money, the former business publication once owned by Time, is having a time these days — after a tumultuous series of sales, new owner Greg Powel, head of digital content company Ad Practitioners, has returned the publication to profit by narrowing its editorial direction to niche consumer finance. With a name like that, it had better be in the black.