Pricing

A sports paper that grades its own calls.

Most sports writing makes a prediction on Monday and never mentions it again. The Playbook goes back to its own. When a call this paper made comes good, or doesn’t, the writer says so in the piece — by name, with the number, in the same edition that makes the next one. You are not asked to take the analysis on trust; you watch it get marked.

01 The tiers

Three tiers, cut where the paper is.

Ten teams is as many as we put in one morning's paper.

That is a limit, not a feature. One edition is one email, and an email has a hard size limit before Gmail clips it. The arithmetic runs out somewhere past a dozen teams — but we stop at ten well before the wall, because an edition that stays comfortably inside the limit is the one we can render at full depth. Push more teams into it and every team gets a thinner piece. We would rather rotate than run every team short.

The ladder is about how many of those ten are yours. The middle tier is everything you follow, every morning — five teams, all five in the paper, no rotation, nothing waiting for tomorrow, on an edition with room to spare. Premium is for following more than fits: twenty-five teams, ten rendered each day, rotating on the news so nothing you follow is forgotten.

The Brief

Free

Two teams. Both, every morning.

The daily paper, at the width of a short read.

  • Follow 2 teams, any leagues we cover
  • Both in the paper, every day
  • The lead story and a daily brief on each team
  • Standings, form and next fixtures
  • The paper marks its own calls — when one lands or misses, the writing says so
  • No Analyst's Desk
Start free →

No card. Unsubscribe from any edition.

The Daily

CA$5.99 per month

or CA$54 a year — CA$4.50 a month

Five teams. All five, every morning.

A real roster, comfortably inside what one edition can hold. Nothing waits for tomorrow.

  • Everything in The Brief
  • Follow 5 teams
  • All five in the paper, every morning — no rotation
  • The Analyst's Desk — the longer read, on every team in season
  • Tactical context, statistical depth, editorial framing

Not open yet.

The full paper

Premium

CA$9.99 per month

or CA$89 a year — CA$7.42 a month

Twenty-five teams. Ten a day, rotating. Nothing forgotten.

For following more than fits — a club, a franchise, a national side, a driver — without the paper thinning out.

  • Everything in the tier below
  • Follow up to 25 teams
  • Ten in the paper every morning, chosen on the day's news
  • Every team you follow appears at least every third day
  • Briefs end on a full stop, never mid-sentence — and when one closes on a prediction, the cut stretches to keep that whole wherever it can
  • The Analyst's Desk on every team in season — all ten, not a selection
  • The deepest layout we render, on every team in the paper

Not open yet.

02 How Premium works

Rotation is why Premium's paper is good.

The obvious worry about rotation is that you are getting less. The opposite is true, and we can show it. An edition that tries to carry a big roster all at once spends its whole size budget on thin coverage: the long reads get clipped to make room, and every team ends up worse served. Capping the render at ten moves that reader onto a better layout entirely.

From the desk · delivered editions

Measured

Two editions, same morning, 20 August 2026

Teams followedAnalyst's DesksDepth per teamBrief depth
10 teams86.75 KBMulti-paragraph
23 teams33.59 KBOne paragraph, clipped

From our own delivered editions, not a projection. The reader following more than twice as many teams got fewer than half the long reads. Rotation is how a twenty-five-team reader gets the ten-team edition's paper.

25

Teams followed

Your whole roster, across every league we cover. Set it once and change it whenever.

10

In the paper each morning

Selected on the day's news and on how recently each team last appeared.

3

Days, at the outside

Every team you follow gets its brief at least this often, whatever your roster size — and its Analyst's Desk whenever that team is in season.

Why does the paper only carry ten teams a day?

Partly because of size, and mostly because of depth. An edition is one email with a hard size limit before it is clipped, and the arithmetic runs out somewhere past a dozen teams. But we stop short of that: the deepest layout we render is only offered to an edition that measures comfortably inside the limit, so a paper packed to the wall is also the thinnest one. Ten is where a full roster still gets the good layout. We could print more teams by cutting sentences out of each one; we would rather carry ten properly and rotate. It is also why there is no unlimited tier — thirty teams really would exceed the whole budget in briefs and furniture alone, so selling it would be selling something that does not arrive.

What actually is the Analyst's Desk?

The brief tells you what happened and what is next. The Desk is the longer piece underneath it — the tactical read, the numbers that matter, and where the paper commits to a call it will later have to grade. It is the part that takes a position, and it runs on every team in the paper that is in season.

You say you grade your own calls. Where can I see the record?

In the writing. A piece that goes back to an earlier call names it, gives the number it was made at, and says whether it landed — inside the same brief or Analyst’s Desk that makes the next one.

There is no separate scoreboard right now. The Ledger page is down: we found it was scoring predictions through a capture path that did not match what was actually printed, so its numbers were not measuring the published paper. We took it down rather than show a record we could not stand behind, and we are rebuilding it. Until it is back, the record is the paper itself — which is a worse scoreboard and a more honest one. That decision is, more or less, the whole argument for this product.

Can I read one before deciding anything?

Yes — real published editions are on the site with subscriber names removed, and the archive carries recent days.

When do the paid tiers open?

When the paper is good enough that we would pay for it. Payments are switched off at the server, not merely hidden on this page — every plan is refused until we turn them on. Start on the free tier and you will hear first.

Start with the free one.

Two teams, one paper, every morning. It is the same newsroom, written by the same desk and marked the same way, and it costs nothing.

Pick your teams