How a newsletter for underserved sports fans reached 1 million subscribers
Ellen Hyslop, co-founder of The Gist, explained why most sports media companies ignored female fans.
When Ellen Hyslop and her co-founders launched The Gist in 2017, none of them had worked in media or sports. They were business school graduates with careers in financial services who had begun to notice how often women were excluded from sports conversations—not necessarily because they lacked interest, but because the media surrounding sports rarely spoke to them.
What began as a side project developed during evenings and Sundays has grown into a sports media company with more than 1 million newsletter subscribers, nearly 750,000 social media followers, a podcast, proprietary games, a paid community, and partnerships with major brands. Along the way, The Gist expanded beyond its original newsletter without abandoning the audience insight that made the company distinctive.
Its story shows how a media startup can turn an underserved audience into a defensible business. The Gist did not win by producing more sports information than established competitors. It won by presenting that information through a different voice, building direct distribution, and giving advertisers access to fans they had struggled to reach.
In a recent interview, Hyslop explained how scrappy marketing helped attract The Gist’s first subscribers, why social media became an important source of revenue, and how the company is expanding into a paid community and launching its own games.
Let’s jump into it…
Finding a gap in sports media
Hyslop met co-founders Roslyn McLarty and Jacie deHoop while studying commerce at Queen’s University in Canada. After graduation, all three moved to Toronto and took jobs in financial services. Hyslop worked in insurance, DeHoop in management consulting, and McLarty in accounting.
Their corporate experience helped them understand the audience they would eventually serve. As young women working in male-dominated industries, they regularly encountered sports conversations that carried social and professional value. Yet sports media was rarely designed to help them enter those conversations.
The idea for The Gist emerged during a night of takeout and wine in February 2017. Hyslop, a lifelong sports fan, began talking about the Toronto Maple Leafs returning to the playoffs. Her friends told her the information would have been useful at work, where people were already discussing the team.
They also enjoyed the way Hyslop explained the story. “This is one of the most fun conversations I’ve ever had about sports,” they told her. Hyslop realized that other friends often came to her for similar help, whether they were filling out fantasy lineups, making NFL picks, or trying to understand a major sports story.
The three opened a Google Doc that night and started recording ideas. “We woke up the next morning and texted each other,” Hyslop recalled, “and we were like, wait, we actually think that this could be something.”
The newsletter boom provided a model. The founders subscribed to The Skimm, The Hustle, and Morning Brew. They were in their mid-20s, did not pay for cable, and consumed much of their news digitally. Email offered a low-cost way to create a sports product that fit those habits.
They spent most of 2017 researching the market before launching. The numbers confirmed that sports media was built largely by and for men. Hyslop said that, at the time, only 18% of sports journalists were women, less than 5% of sports coverage focused on women, and more than 75% of ESPN’s viewership was male.
“That seems so wild to us considering sports are supposed to be for everyone,” she said. “At the same time, what a great business opportunity, because they’re leaving out so many women.”
The founders were not interested in creating a publication that covered only women’s sports. Their larger goal was to build a general sports brand for fans who felt alienated by traditional coverage. The Gist would cover men’s and women’s sports, employ women to create the content, use an accessible voice, and meet its audience on the platforms it already used.