The Financial Times plans to open 2 more U.S. bureaus to target ‘global Americans’

The FT has about 1.1 million global print and digital subscribers, about a third of which are in the U.S., according to Spiegel, who said U.S. paid readers are “overwhelmingly digital,” around 80%. He did not provide exact figures.

The growth in its U.S. audience — and failing to continue to develop more of a readership in Asia after making a “huge investment” — led the company to reconsider its strategy here, Spiegel said, who did not provide additional commentary on what that investment looked like.

A three-year growth plan for the U.S. was born. “We were punching below our weight, with not enough editorial or marketing resources” behind FT’s reach in the U.S., Spiegel said. Now year two of that three-year plan, he did not provide context on how much money the company is pooling — or will continue to invest — into its U.S. expansion.

The FT is targeting “global Americans” or those involved in an industry or sector that is “global in scale,” such as finance, energy and tech, Spiegel said. Or Americans that have family, business or academic ties to global markets. It’s not necessarily about competing with other financial publications like The Wall Street Journal, but being a part of the mix of subscriptions a “global American” — and left unsaid: those that have a wallet of one — might pay for. “I do think there’s space for all of us,” Spiegel said.

By targeting this demographic, the publication could theoretically also attract luxury advertisers, a category that wasn’t hit as hard during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The publication is focused on news quality, over specific beats or filling teams. A US-China correspondent role for its D.C. bureau, as an example, aims to get scoops on relations between the two countries ranging from foreign policy to trade. The FT’s U.S. headquarters in New York City is focused on financial coverage and a bureau in San Francisco covers Silicon Valley and tech. The FT also has an office in Chicago.

The Houston bureau is technically a reopening — the FT had an office there that shuttered over a decade ago. The joint bureau will be mostly about pooling resources and sharing a physical space. Editorial will remain separate. However, there may be opportunities down the line for the FT and Nikkei to co-host events, Spiegel said. In August, the FT will open another bureau in the Los Angeles area to cover the media and entertainment industries. These new bureaus mean the FT will have more offices in the U.S than in the U.K, Spiegel said.

“When you expand a new audience for a media company, especially a business-to-business one like the FT, the way you typically expand is through a specialization,” said Ava Seave, principal of Quantum Media, a management consulting firm specializing in media. Choosing a city like Houston to focus on the energy sector, “makes sense and is a smart way” to “expand your market by a speciality,” and find areas of coverage that differentiate the FT from other publications covering that sector as well. Being in Houston could give the FT “a competitive advantage,” Seave said. (Houston employs nearly a third of the country’s jobs in oil and gas extraction.)