The New York Times announced Monday that it will disband its sports department in a shocking move for sports journalism. The newspaper will shift all of its sports coverage to The Athletic, which the New York Times bought for $550 million in January 2022.

“We plan to focus even more directly on distinctive, high-impact news and enterprise journalism about how sports intersect with money, power, culture, politics and society at large,” editors from The Times said. “At the same time, we will scale back the newsroom’s coverage of games, players, teams and leagues.”

The sports desk at The Times employs more than 35 writers and editors. No layoffs are expected as those covering sports will be moved into different roles and departments. Plenty of sports journalists were stunned by the move.

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This move comes off the heels of nearly 20 layoffs from The Athletic in June. The Athletic has yet to turn a profit under The Times, reporting a loss of $7.8 million in the first quarter of this year.

For the first time since the acquisition, articles from The Athletic will appear in the print edition of The Times. As of March of this year, The Athletic has over three million subscribers, up from just over one million when it was purchased by The Times.

This decision by the New York Times is a damning one in a lot of people's eyes from the sports journalism world. The Times had a sports section since 1927 and covered some of the world's biggest sporting events over the last century. While the newspaper will still have sports coverage, a piece of its rich history feels like it was lost today.