Paramount Acquires Free Press at 7.5x
The Free Press at $20M/year
This deal priced The Free Press less like a software platform and more like a strategic editorial asset that could reshape a legacy newsroom. At about 7.5x revenue on roughly $20.4M of annualized revenue, Paramount paid a premium to own a fast growing subscription publication and to bring Bari Weiss into CBS News leadership. That sits between Axios at 5.3x and The Athletic at 8.5x, which makes the purchase look like a talent plus audience acquisition rather than a pure cash flow bet.
-
The operating asset was real, not just the personality. The Free Press reached about 170,000 paid subscribers and $20.4M in annualized revenue by September 2025, with subscriptions as the core business and ads, video, and events as secondary layers. That made it a scaled direct to consumer media property, not just a newsletter.
-
The multiple also reflects scarcity. Substack’s biggest writers are hard to replicate because they bring a paying audience that can move with them. Substack takes 10% of GMV, which works while writers are rising, but as they get larger they have more reason to leave for Beehiiv or Kit, or sell back into legacy media from a position of strength.
-
For Paramount Skydance, the acquisition also fit a broader reset at CBS. Paramount announced the deal and Weiss’s editor-in-chief role on October 6, 2025, after the FCC approved the $8B Skydance merger in July 2025, with public commitments around editorial oversight and a CBS News ombudsman. In practice, buying The Free Press imported both an audience and a newsroom philosophy.
Going forward, more creator led media brands will be valued on whether they can deliver both loyal subscription revenue and a transferable editorial franchise. The winners will be the ones that can turn a star journalist brand into a broader institution with podcasts, video, events, and a bench of talent that survives after the founder moves into a bigger seat.