The Business of Braves Today is Strong, and Other Notes

The one where I'm thanking each of you for being a part of what we're building here

This photo was taken before Atlanta’s 2024 home opener, my first time covering an MLB game in person as a credentialed baseball writer

(This one’s going to be a lengthy ‘behind-the-curtain’ on Braves Today as an entity, both the podcast and the newsletter, and where I want to take it for 2026. Back to the regularly scheduled baseball content on Friday.)

When I first started podcasting, someone gave me the best possible advice about the size of my audience:

Picture them all in the same space, at the same time, listening to you.

It’s a convenient visual representation that tricks your brain into seeing the size of your audience in physical space rather than just as a number you inevitably thought would be larger.

Was it a nightclub? What about a small auditorium, or even a full-size concert hall?

I can proudly say, as we approach the end of 2025, that there’s not a single venue in the world large enough to represent every single view of an article or a podcast this calendar year. And for that, I’m grateful.

Let’s talk about it.

(TL:DR: Braves Today is doing surprisingly well from a consumption perspective. I want to make it better from a content perspective and grow the revenue to match in 2026.)

Braves Today is both a podcast and a newsletter

…and everyone consumes Braves Today differently.

Some people are avid readers, consuming the newsletter as soon as it comes out at 7AM Eastern every weekday.

Others like to listen to it on their lunch break or commute, with the audio dropping at 11AM Eastern every weekday.

And the rest decide, for some reason, to look at my ugly mug around noon Eastern on YouTube.

And a surprising number of you do at least two of these, hanging on to both the newsletter and the podcast every day. One of my resolutions I’ve set for 2026, with those that ‘double up’ in mind, is to have less one-for-one overlap between the podcast and newsletter, especially in the offseason.

And as I alluded to above, there’s not a venue large enough to hold everyone who has watched or listened to or read Braves Today in 2025. Here are some numbers for you, because we’re believers in radical transparency over here. (All stats as of Tuesday night)

YouTube

The Braves Today YouTube channel received 770,001 views in 2025, accounting for 130.9k watch hours, on 246 recorded videos and 21 live streams. That’s roughly 2,883 viewers per piece of content.

From a venue perspective, that’s 18 sellouts of Truist Park (capacity: 41,147) and a 19th event with the ballpark almost 3/4ths full.

It makes sense that the YouTube channel is the largest, as it’s been around the longest - we published our first video in late March 2023. The biggest change to the channel came in the format, back in September 2024, when I reconfigured the show to be daily rather than its sporadic twice-weekly publication schedule.

Most popular episodes:

1. The Reasons Why the Atlanta Braves Replaced Rick Kranitz with Jeremy Hefner from November 6th, with 8,331 viewers

2. Ronald Acuña Jr. Goes to Injured List, and Someone Should Get Fired For It, from July 30th, with 7,555 viewers

3. Forget 2025, Here's What the Atlanta Braves NEED to Do to Contend in 2026, coming on July 7th, with 7,193 viewers.

4. The Atlanta Braves Draft THREE Shortstops? In THIS Economy? from July 14th, with 6,470 viewers

Newsletter

The newsletter isn’t as old as the YouTube channel, having been created back in September of 2024, but it’s seen rapid growth and is usually on the Substack “Rising” charts in the Sports category.

For 2025, the Braves Today newsletter received 628,709 views on 394 articles, an average of 1,595 if you don’t round up. Anecdotally, the deep dives do better than the game recaps (branded “Today’s Three Things”), although I’m not sure if that’s because you can get game recaps anywhere or if it’s because a lot of those are released at 11PM after both the night’s game and my postgame show responsibilities are complete.

From a venue perspective, that’s 15 sellouts of Truist Park and another quarter-full ballpark.

Most popular newsletters:

1. My Choice For the Next Atlanta Braves Manager is George Lombard from October 16th, with 9,490 views.

2. The Braves Don’t Need a Miracle. They Need a Plan for 2026 from July 7th, with 8,467 views.¹

3. Why Did The Atlanta Braves Stand Pat at the Trade Deadline? from August 1st, with 8,809 views.

4. There Is An Obvious Choice for Atlanta’s Next Manager from August 15th, with 6,692 views.

Audio

This is in partnership with Bleav, who manages the audio backend and ad sales for me in exchange for a percentage of the revenue. While detailed stats are a little tougher to get without submitting a manual request, the audio feed (which wasn’t created until I officially signed with them on the podcast in September of 2024) has 154,821 all-time downloads, most of which came in 2025.

From a venue perspective, that’s another three sellouts of Truist Park and a fourth date that’s just over 3/4ths full.

Total Consumption of Braves Today = 1,553,531

That number blows my mind. That’s Truist Park selling out over 38 times. That’s more than five MLB teams welcomed through their gates all season.²

From the bottom of my heart…thank you. I never, in my wildest dreams, could have imagined that Braves Today would become that. We have over 1,700 written subscribers and over 5700 YouTube subs. We have newsletter subscribers that are professional journalists, including writers for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Washington Post, as well as former ESPNers and even multiple people from within the organization at various levels, including the MLB club.³ On the podcast, we’ve welcomed in guests like CJ Nitkowski of FanDuel Sports Network, Justin Toscano (then the Braves beat writer for the AJC), and many more.

Is it weird to say that I want to do more in 2026?

Let’s talk about the areas in which I want to improve (and want your feedback, as well)

Content

My first goal is to increase both the variety and frequency of content in 2026, although I may need some help to do that.

I’d like to add more dedicated minor league coverage, optimally by hosting some guest writers a few times a week and pairing that with a twice-weekly podcast that I’d release on the YouTube channel in the afternoons, just to differentiate it from the existing show. I don’t know what this will look like - is it more game recaps, deep dives into specific prospects, or general updates on prospects who have made notable changes? I need to find the person or persons, probably, before I flesh this out some more. Ideally, me traveling to more of the org’s minor league affiliates to watch games and shoot content with prospects and staff (like the PxP folks) is part of that, but we’ll see what that looks like as we get closer to the season.

I’d also like to get better at having more guests on the podcast. This one’s entirely on me - I often have the contacts, but often haven’t reached out for some reason or another.⁴ I’m resolved to be better about this in 2026. Some of the names I want y’all to hold me accountable on are Wiley Ballard, Brandon Gaudin, Ben Ingram, and former players like Tim Hudson (who lives twenty minutes from me in Auburn, for goodness sake) and Dale Murphy.

I’d also like more variety. I feel like I talk about pitching a lot, sometimes neglecting the hitters from a detailed breakdown perspective, and I don’t do a lot of “evergreen” content on the podcast like talking about historical moments, notable games, and personal topics as they pertain to the Braves. I’ve always believed in a ‘content over creator’ philosophy that, in essence, says you’re not there for me, you’re there for the Braves content. I think that’s been the biggest sticking point to me doing more lighthearted and/or evergreen content during the offseason, but I’ll work on that.

Subscriber benefits

We bandied around a lot of ideas last year, but they didn’t come to fruition - a meetup at a game, live watch parties on Zoom or some other platform, etc. Some of this was due to my workload, which I’ll address in a minute, but some of it was me just not getting those things on the calendar. Again, I’ll be better about that in 2026.

I also want to offer more things to those who subscribe. Right now, the benefits of a paid subscription are mostly limited to the knowledge that you’re helping me build something worthwhile, coupled with occasional paywalled posts and the ability to chat directly with me via Substack.

That needs to be more substantial. We’re going to turn on the paywall for a majority of the “deep dives” sometime towards the end of spring training, including all of our press conference content.

I’m also working on a merch store. Anything smaller we create, like laptop stickers, etc., will be put into a welcome pack for premium subscribers. Anyone in the founding member tier, which is titled the “Site Hall of Fame” (for now), will be offered additional merch like hats, water bottles, notebooks, etc that we develop. I’ve already signed up for the Shopify account, I just need to take the actual merchandise ideas and get them translated into physical products. Let me know if you have ideas outside of “slap the logo on stuff”, because even I’ve already thought of that. My goal to launch this store is the end of January, but that’s obviously a moving target.

Grow Braves Today's revenue

Here’s the big one.

Contrary to popular belief, 1.5M clicks/views on your content isn’t as lucrative as you might have assumed, especially when almost half of those are on Substack, where programmatic ad delivery is most certainly not a thing.

The baseball income for Crosby Media LLC, my holding company, is divided into three areas:

Freelance Income: This is “Lindsay getting paid to talk or write about sports on an outlet that isn’t his” money, so hosting the Locked On Braves Postcast or Locked On’s MLB Game Night, subbing in for my good friend Zac Blackerby on a postgame show for Locked On Auburn, talking about college baseball for The Barn Auburn, a freelance written piece for SI or someone else, etc. In 2025, this accounted for about 65% of the company’s revenue.

Podcast Income: This is the combined YouTube and audio income for the Braves Today podcast, accounting for about 24% of revenue. The ad campaigns I’ve participated in, both through Bleav (like FanDuel, the presenting sponsor of the podcast) and self-sourced (like Chinook Seedery), funnel into this bucket.

Newsletter Income: This is the remaining 11% of income, entirely from paid subscriptions to the newsletter. We have a pretty low conversion rate from free to paid subscribers, although I’ve been told it’s on the higher end for newsletters that don’t ever use their paywall.

While this second job of talking and writing about baseball is no way in danger of replacing my primary income (and source of health insurance for the family), my wife excitedly pointed out that my 2025 revenue number was roughly equivalent to the part-time job that she works.⁵

Here’s the dilemma

The whole ‘Lindsay writing and talking about baseball’ enterprise does make money - again, not enough for it to be my sole job, but it is more than just a hobby at this point.

I know it can make more, but I’m trying to walk the fine line of not brute forcing it by pushing out more and more content, but also not aggressively charging for everything and making it impossible to discover and get into the Braves Today ecosystem without breaking out your wallet.

Make sense?

Either way I approach it, 2026 feels like it has the potential to be a big year. Zac Blackerby, the host of Locked On Auburn and one of my closest friends, told me that he thinks this could grow by 50% next year. Things sometimes feel like they’re approaching critical mass - almost at the tipping point where the growth becomes exponential and this can be a capital-t Thing.

And then there are times when I am sitting in my home office, crippled by writer’s block and wondering how I’m going to get a podcast or newsletter out while my wife and dog are peacefully sleeping in the next room. Like I’ve tapped every single avenue, each path, and each angle of everything, but I still need to feed the content machine.

So I want to turn to you. The comments are OPEN on this newsletter, different from normal, because whether you are an avid reader or rarely read, I’d love to hear from you about your feelings towards Braves Today. What do you like and what don’t you like? What should we add for next season, and what should we stop doing? How can I make this better?

I’d love to get your thoughts. Leave a comment down below or feel free to email me at contact at bravestoday.com.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Go Braves.

-Lindsay

1. This is an example of the 1-to-1 overlap with the podcast that I’m trying to get away from going forward

2. If you’re curious: Athletics were last at 768,464, Rays were 29th at 786,750, Marlins were at 1.157M, White Sox were at 1.45M, and Pirates were at 1.53M.

3. No, I will not tell you who.

4. I’m sure a therapist would say it’s some sort of fear of rejection.

5. I’ll argue that her hours are much better, though, as she’s usually done around 12:30 every weekday and I’ve been up at 2AM CT on a Thursday before to do a live MLB Game Night episode after an extra-innings West Coast game finally wrapped up after twelve innings.