Whether you’re evaluating partnership opportunities or considering which new revenue streams deserve investment, current case studies from four U.S. news companies around the world offer valuable perspectives on what’s working and why.

Three major publishers are demonstrating how events can evolve from supplementary activities into substantial revenue engines, each with distinct approaches and success metrics, while Condé Nast has launched a creator shopping platform. 

The Atlantic: record festival revenue in New York debut

The Atlantic Festival is on pace to deliver its largest revenue haul since the event’s 2018 rebranding, with year-over-year festival revenue growing 36% compared to 2024, Adweek reported.

The news company hosted nearly 2,000 in-person attendees and claimed more than 10,000 virtual tickets, with single-day passes priced at US$475 and two-day passes at US$800. 

Events now comprise 25% of The Atlantic’s commercial revenue, with 60% of that coming from The Atlantic Festival. Publisher Alice McKown said events have become “a central pillar of the company’s growth strategy heading into 2026 and 2027.” 

This year marked the festival’s first time in New York City, a strategic shift from Washington D.C. designed to tap into the city’s density of subscribers, sponsors, and media influence. The move appears successful: 29% of overall in-person attendees were C-suite executives, with directors and vice presidents pushing the share of director-level or higher participants to 56%. For premium pass holders, that figure rose to 74%. 

Beyond the flagship festival, The Atlantic produces about 25 events annually, ranging from vertical-specific summits to private salons and roundtables. Eight of The Atlantic’s top 10 advertising partners are buying into events, according to McKown, with the sales team pitching events as an enticement to secure larger deals. 

Semafor: events-first, journalism-powered model

Semafor has built an even more event-centric business model, with events accounting for more than 50% of revenue and projections to grow 150% year-over-year from 2024 to 2025, according to CEO Justin Smith.

The startup expects to produce 80 events this year and 100 in 2026, with the events business powering Semafor to cash-flow positivity just 26 months after launch, in reporting also from Adweek.

“Our model is events-first, journalism-powered,” Smith said. “We've leaned hard into events, grown that piece of the business dramatically, and it’s now the core of what we do.”

Semafor’s premiere conference, the World Economy Summit (fall version taking place this week), drew around 200 Fortune 500 CEOs in 2025 and is projected to host more than 400 next year. If that trajectory holds, the summit will attract more Fortune 500 CEOs than Davos by 2028. The World Economy Summit itself generated eight-figure revenue this year, though Semafor declined to share more specific financial details. 

While events lead growth, Semafor’s advertising and newsletters business is also expanding, doubling revenue year-over-year. The company has built an audience of more than 1 million e-mail subscribers who subscribe to an average of two newsletters each. Its readership includes a heavy concentration of C-suite readers, including an invitation-only CEO Signal newsletter that counts three-quarters of Fortune 500 leaders as subscribers.

Minnesota Star Tribune: building local event strategy 

The Minnesota Star Tribune is taking a more regional approach, launching its inaugural North Star Summit in November 2025 as part of its evolution from a city newspaper to a statewide media company. The one-day event, priced at US$300 for general admission and US$500 for VIP tickets, aims for a sold-out crowd of 350 attendees at the Walker Art Center. 

The summit builds on momentum from the Star Tribune’s inaugural The Wrap event in early January, which sold out with 1,000 attendees at its Heritage Printing Facility and included a silent auction benefiting The Minnesota Star Tribune Local News Fund.

Chris Isles, the Star Tribune’s vice president of communications and brand marketing, said events represent “a significant and meaningful step” toward the outlet’s goal of having 25% of revenue coming from non-traditional sources — part of its rebrand strategy launched in August 2024. 

The North Star Summit is billing itself as an ideas festival targeting business, political, and cultural leaders, drawing inspiration from The New York Times’ DealBook Summit, Texas Tribune’s TribFest, the Aspen Ideas Festival, and South by Southwest. Confirmed speakers include Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Google Managing Director Danielle Russell, Minnesota Vikings Chief Operating Officer Andrew Miller, and Neel Kashkari, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. 

The real financial engine is sponsorships, though there won’t be a presenting sponsor and sponsorship packages do not include stage time. “You’re not buying your way onto the stage,” Isles said. “The content needs to stand alone and speak for itself.” The publication is hoping to secure three sponsors, though none were named on the landing page as of yet.

Condé Nast launches Vette

Condé Nast announced in September 2025 that it will launch Vette, a creator shopping platform scheduled for early 2026, addressing a significant friction point in social commerce. The platform will give creators the capability to build their own e-commerce sites using a marketplace model, where customers shop the creators’ sites directly and brands drop-ship orders, with checkout handled by Vette. 

“Affiliate is high friction. This will make it more seamless to find something on social media and then purchase it,” says Lisa Aiken, Vogue’s executive fashion director and Condé Nast’s senior vice president of commerce, who is leading Vette. Commerce revenues at Condé Nast have grown approximately 200% in the last five years.

Vette operates as a back-end operating platform rather than a consumer-facing site, offering creators a suite of AI-powered tools to make selling easier. Inventory feeds are built in so creators can browse and select new items from available brands, with AI recommendations. Marketing and insight tools help creators drive traffic and sales while understanding which items are selling and at what price points. 

The platform addresses challenges on multiple fronts. For creators, it provides direct audience relationships without the overhead of managing inventory or full-fledged operating teams. For brands, Vette offers a new distribution channel at a time when “wholesale is exceptionally challenged right now, and DTC is expensive,” according to Aiken. 

Vette will operate on a revenue share model with creators and brands, though details weren’t disclosed. “I want it to be a win-win-win,” Aiken said, positioning Vette as a facilitator of a new fashion ecosystem that uses the trust Condé Nast has built with brands.

CEO Roger Lynch said in a statement: “Over the last five years, we’ve made investments in our commerce capabilities and have seen major growth every year as a result. Now, we’re building on that foundation with Vette, a model that helps creators thrive and brands grow stronger connections with consumers. It’s a step that sets a new standard for what the future of commerce can be.”

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