The Athletic engagement report
@TheAthletic - 1.6M followers on X
Measured over 228 original posts from a 30-day window, last computed on August 31, 2026.
Engagement
A typical post picks up 51 interactions against 1.6M followers, an engagement rate of 0.003%. Measured over 228 original posts, its engagement rate beats 30% of 3,739 tracked accounts of a similar size, which puts it in the middle of its size range rather than at either end. Posts are seen about 36K times each, and 0.141% of those impressions turn into an interaction. That is about 2.24% of the follower count, which is the gap between an audience on paper and an audience in a timeline. Posting runs at about 13.7 posts a day over the last 30 days, with activity on roughly 53% of days. Most posts go out around 17:00 UTC, and Tuesday is the busiest day of the week. Of the 228 posts sampled, 69% carry an image or video, 13% are part of a thread and 74% link out. The account's strongest tracked post pulled 6.0K interactions, about 118x its own typical post. Recurring topics include #dutchgp, #f1, #stlblues.
Measured over 228 original posts from a 30-day window, last computed on August 31, 2026. Recurring tags: #dutchgp, #f1, #stlblues.
Compared with accounts its own size
The Athletic's engagement rate beats 30% of the tracked X accounts closest to it in follower count (3,739 accounts, accounts of similar size (decile 10 of 10)). A percentile is spread evenly by construction, so 50 really is the middle of that group and 90 really is its top tenth.
On engagement per impression rather than per follower it beats 13% of the same group. When those two numbers disagree, the gap is about how far its posts travel rather than how people react to them.
Where this sits in the catalog
At 0.003%, The Athletic sits above the 10th percentile of the 36,378 accounts in this comparison. That places it in the bottom 25% band, which runs below 0.012%.
Show the percentile table
| Percentile | Engagement rate |
|---|---|
| 10th percentile | 0.002% |
| 25th percentile | 0.012% |
| 50th percentile | 0.08% |
| 75th percentile | 0.432% |
| 90th percentile | 2.10% |
| 99th percentile | 161.0% |
This ruler is the whole measured catalog, not a size-matched group: it shows where the raw rate falls across every account we can measure, all of which are large. For a like-for-like comparison, read the size-band percentile above instead. See how the bands are built
Posting timing
This account posts most often around 17:00 UTC, and Tuesday is its busiest day of the week. The bars below are the catalog-wide pattern, with this account's own busiest slot marked. They do not show how this account performs at each hour: we keep one aggregate per account, not one per hour, so that measurement does not exist in our data.
Show engagement by hour posted, utc as a table
| Hour (UTC) | Vs author median | Posts |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00 UTC | -1% | 50K |
| 01:00 UTC | -2% | 51K |
| 02:00 UTC | -3% | 50K |
| 03:00 UTC | -4% | 53K |
| 04:00 UTC | -6% | 43K |
| 05:00 UTC | -4% | 42K |
| 06:00 UTC | -4% | 48K |
| 07:00 UTC | -5% | 52K |
| 08:00 UTC | -4% | 60K |
| 09:00 UTC | -3% | 69K |
| 10:00 UTC | -2% | 72K |
| 11:00 UTC | -3% | 78K |
| 12:00 UTC | -2% | 86K |
| 13:00 UTC | -2% | 94K |
| 14:00 UTC | -4% | 97K |
| 15:00 UTC | -2% | 100K |
| 16:00 UTC | -3% | 97K |
| 17:00 UTC | -2% | 90K |
| 18:00 UTC | -1% | 84K |
| 19:00 UTC | -2% | 79K |
| 20:00 UTC | -1% | 74K |
| 21:00 UTC | -1% | 66K |
| 22:00 UTC | -2% | 57K |
| 23:00 UTC | -2% | 51K |
Show engagement by day of week as a table
| Day | Vs author median | Posts |
|---|---|---|
| Sunday | +4% | 230K |
| Monday | 0% | 286K |
| Tuesday | -2% | 276K |
| Wednesday | -1% | 251K |
| Thursday | -1% | 244K |
| Friday | -3% | 252K |
| Saturday | +3% | 227K |
Best tweets
- Aug 26, 2026118x their median
BREAKING: The NFL Pro Bowl is being eliminated. On Wednesday, league executives presented to team owners the future of the Pro Bowl, which will no longer have a standalone game — be it tackle or flag football — or games. Eighty-eight players will receive the Pro Bowl honor with no alternates, corralling a key aspect of the all-star event that had gotten out of whack in recent years. More details from @jjones9: https://t.co/BkXQAPlTFV
- Aug 18, 202693x their median
Von Miller: “It's crazy because I ran into Dak in Vegas probably like a month ago. He was sitting in the high-limit gambling. I just sat down with Dak and we just started gambling together and talking. And I'm like, 'Hey man, it's about time, Dak. It's about time. You got to break through with one of these teams. You got to break through one of these years. I think this year you'll be able to do it. You got everybody to do it.' “And I didn't have any inkling on being a Dallas Cowboy. It just happened naturally. And then the Cowboys reached out and I was just like, 'Bro, this is a sign. This is a sign for me.'”
- Aug 18, 202661x their median
Fenway Sports Group (FSG) sold close to 40 per cent of Liverpool Football Club to the consortium including U.S. billionaire Jeff Bezos. Early suggestions on both sides of the transaction indicated the purchased stake was in the range of approximately 30 per cent to one-third, but The Athletic can reveal the figure is actually much closer to 40 per cent, according to sources with knowledge of the deal. 1892 Holdings, a consortium headed up and led by Amit Bhatia, the former Queens Park Rangers co-owner who will take up the position of vice-chairman at Liverpool, has purchased around a 38 per cent shareholding in Liverpool. That is a much more significant share of the club, while there is also an option for the consortium to buy a controlling stake in the Premier League side, as per the terms of their agreement with FSG, in the next 12 months. Exclusive from @Simon_Hughes__ and @Dan_Sheldon_ 🔗 https://t.co/Till5Kcyu1
- Aug 18, 202643x their median
💣🇺🇸 BREAKING: The Philadelphia Union are finalizing a deal to sign USMNT center back Mark McKenzie from FC Toulouse in January, per sources. - Fee around $2.5m. McKenzie will be a DP - Toulouse made clear no summer departure, so move for January agreed - McKenzie, 27, returns to his boyhood club https://t.co/d2mghnhIfl
- Aug 22, 202632x their median
The NHL is on track to award its 33rd franchise to Texas as soon as the end of the year, deputy commissioner Bill Daly told The Athletic. Friedkin’s Pursuit Sports has already agreed to pay a $2 billion expansion fee to bring a team to either Houston or Austin, pending the ability to build an arena in one of those markets and secure final approval from the NHL’s Board of Governors. “They’re projecting the ability to start play in 2029-30,” Daly said. “So we will have one down and potentially one to go. We have ongoing discussions both with people in the Phoenix marketplace, but also Atlanta, and then we’ll see what comes of those discussions.” https://t.co/JmKfJRuwEw
- Aug 17, 202628x their median
NEWS: Connor Zilisch signs a multi-year contract with Hendrick Motorsports to drive its No. 48 car beginning in 2028. https://t.co/w0RMeMhrm4
- Aug 24, 202619x their median
There’s a new two-way star emerging at this year’s Little League Baseball World Series … and her name is Kinley Rasmus. Rasmus took the mound on Wednesday, becoming the 25th girl to play in the 79-year history of the LLBWS and the ninth to pitch in the competition. https://t.co/lJ1GHLBvCT
- Aug 17, 202618x their median
Todd Boehly and Mark Walter are in talks to sell their shares in Chelsea to Clearlake Capital. Buyout talks between the parties have been explored at various times in the two years since The Athletic detailed a breakdown in relations between Boehly and Clearlake, who partnered in the BlueCo consortium which purchased Chelsea for £2.3billion from the sanctioned Roman Abramovich in June 2022. More from @liam_twomey, @SJohnsonSport and @mjshrimper ⬇️ 🔗 https://t.co/sIg73rxw8w
- Aug 18, 202618x their median
▪️ A secret lunch with Deco on the Costa Brava ▪️ Singing Barca songs at a July wedding ▪️ How Real Madrid reacted to missing out ▪️ City’s preference on selling to Madrid ▪️ Why Rodri chose Barca over the Bernabeu Spain’s World Cup-winning captain Rodri is a Barcelona player, joining from Manchester City in a deal that could rise to €76.5m with add-ons. @polballus tells the story of how it got done. 🔗 https://t.co/oYF0B6lYMa
- Aug 18, 202618x their median
A San Diego Padres catching coordinator has been detained and taken into ICE custody, his family and the team told @TheAthletic. Oswaldo Pirela was taken into custody on Sunday at El Paso International Airport. He's been in contact with family. Story: https://t.co/qWuSV45lRp https://t.co/ZAAfGmnJ1P
Ranked by total interactions across everything we have tracked for this account, which is a longer history than the 30-day window the rates above use. The multiple compares each post to this account's own median.
Recurring topics
The most frequent hashtags in the sampled posts. They describe what this account writes about; they are not a performance signal, and the catalog-wide breakdown on the hub shows how little hashtag count moves.
Buy or sell X accounts - escrow-protected
PlayerSells is an escrow marketplace for X accounts. Every deal is protected, with no middleman risk.
Reading these numbers
A typical post picks up 51 interactions against 1.6M followers, an engagement rate of 0.003%. Measured over 228 original posts, its engagement rate beats 30% of 3,739 tracked accounts of a similar size, which puts it in the middle of its size range rather than at either end. Posts are seen about 36K times each, and 0.141% of those impressions turn into an interaction. That is about 2.24% of the follower count, which is the gap between an audience on paper and an audience in a timeline. Posting runs at about 13.7 posts a day over the last 30 days, with activity on roughly 53% of days. Most posts go out around 17:00 UTC, and Tuesday is the busiest day of the week. Of the 228 posts sampled, 69% carry an image or video, 13% are part of a thread and 74% link out. The account's strongest tracked post pulled 6.0K interactions, about 118x its own typical post. Recurring topics include #dutchgp, #f1, #stlblues.
- What is The Athletic's engagement rate on X?
- The Athletic (@TheAthletic) has an engagement rate of 0.003%, based on the median interactions across 228 original posts from the last 30 days against 1,616,214 followers. Replies, reposts and quote-posts of other people are excluded from that sample.
- Is that a good engagement rate?
- At 0.003%, The Athletic sits above the 10th percentile of the 36,378 accounts in this comparison. Those comparison accounts are all large ones, because our scanning cadence is weighted towards big accounts, so this is a ranking among peers of similar scale rather than a ranking across X.
- Does @TheAthletic have real engagement?
- Its engagement rate beats 30% of the tracked X accounts closest to it in follower count (3,739 accounts), which puts it in the middle of its size range group. Ranking inside a size band matters because engagement rate falls as accounts grow, so a raw rate would mostly re-measure the follower count. It is a starting point for a look at follower quality, not a verdict on it.
- When does @TheAthletic post?
- Most posts go out around 17:00 UTC, and Tuesday is its busiest day, at roughly 13.73 posts per day across the measured window.