Angela Mackay, Chief Commercial Officer and Managing Director, Asia Pacific at the Financial Times, shares lessons from the FT’s revenue diversification journey and explores how media organisations can build more resilient businesses while protecting the value of their core brand.

 
How can media organisations diversify their revenue streams without losing sight of what makes them valuable? In this Beyond Reader Revenue conversation, Angela Mackay, Chief Commercial Officer and Managing Director, Asia Pacific at the Financial Times, shares insights from the FT’s transformation.

Over the past two decades, the Financial Times has evolved from a business heavily reliant on advertising into a more diversified organisation with income from subscriptions, events, research, specialist titles and consulting.

Angela Mackay has witnessed much of this transformation first-hand. In conversation with Tim Goudsward, Consultant at FT Strategies, she reflects on the strategic choices behind the FT’s approach to diversification: building direct reader relationships, reducing exposure to advertising cycles, and creating events that become an integral part of customers’ professional lives. She also considers what other media organisations can learn from this journey.

 

Key discussion points:

Build direct relationships with your audience

The FT’s move towards paid digital content was about more than generating subscription revenue. Its metered model enabled the organisation to establish direct relationships with readers and collect the first-party data needed to understand and serve them better. This same reasoning shaped the development of its B2B subscription business, reducing reliance on intermediaries and creating a more resilient source of recurring revenue.

Diversify with purpose

For the FT, diversification has helped reduce exposure to fluctuations in individual revenue streams, especially in the advertising cycle. Subscriptions, events, research, specialist media and consulting offer multiple ways for customers to engage with the FT. The aim is not merely to add more products, but to build complementary propositions that reinforce one another and make the broader business more resilient.

Create experiences customers cannot afford to miss

The most successful events offer more than networking opportunities. Angela highlights the potential to make them an essential part of customers’ professional lives—places where people come to learn, build relationships and do business. Delivering this value demands ongoing scrutiny of the portfolio, as well as the willingness to develop what works and move on from those propositions lacking sufficient demand or commercial support.

Protect what makes the brand valuable

Diversification should never undermine the qualities that make the core brand distinctive. For the FT, high-quality content and editorial independence remain fundamental, even at commercially sponsored events. From this foundation, media organisations can confidently charge for their work and remain flexible in reaching audiences, adopting formats and channels ranging from live events to video and audio, while continually seeking new audiences.

FT Strategies works alongside news and media organisations to identify and develop new revenue opportunities that complement their core business, such as events, B2B subscriptions, licences, and digital advertising. We help organisations to create scalable revenue streams and strengthen their commercial resilience. To find out more about how we can assist your organisation in diversifying its revenue, please get in touch.