The GIST

The GIST is a Canadian sports media company founded in 2017 by Queen's University Commerce graduates Roslyn McLarty, Jacie deHoop and Ellen Hyslop. Its core product is a free sports news newsletter written by women, delivered four times per week (Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday) and designed as a roughly five-minute read. Alongside the flagship newsletter, the company operates a sports business newsletter and a college sports newsletter, each published three times per week, plus "The GIST of It" podcast, a news website, and daily social content on Instagram and Twitter.

Editorially, The GIST covers major professional leagues while giving deliberate weight to women's sports, citing industry figures that under 4% of sports media coverage focuses on female athletes and under 14% of sports journalists are women. Site content spans news recaps and analysis (WNBA, NFL, college football, the Women's Pro Baseball League and others), long-form features on topics such as maternity leave in sport and the Larry Nassar scandal, athlete interviews, and beginner-oriented guides, glossaries and FAQs on sports and sports betting. The company has also run community programming including online pools, brackets and fantasy drafts, and in-person viewing parties held roughly quarterly.

The company reports an audience of more than one million newsletter subscribers/members and employs an estimated 40-50 people.

Founding story

The three co-founders graduated from Queen's University's Commerce program in 2014 and took corporate jobs in financial services in Toronto. Observing how central sports fandom was to the city's social life while feeling excluded from it — deHoop described sports as feeling like "a boys' club" — they set out to create a female voice in sports aimed at a female audience, inspired by consumer media brands such as theSkimm, Girlboss, Morning Brew and The Hustle. They soft-launched a weekly e-newsletter at the end of 2017 to an initial group of about 500 subscribers, mostly friends and colleagues. After roughly six months, the team was one of five in Canada accepted into the Digital News Innovation Challenge incubator, which provided $100,000 in non-dilutive funding plus $50,000 in Facebook and Instagram ad credits and other support — the catalyst for all three founders to leave their corporate jobs and work on The GIST full time.

Business model

The GIST distributes free newsletters, a podcast, social content and a website to a large consumer audience, and monetizes that audience through advertising and brand partnerships rather than subscriptions. Co-founder Roslyn McLarty has described the newsletter's incremental margins as favorable once audience scale is reached, with the principal cost being the upfront investment in audience growth.

Advertising and brand partnerships with sports, betting and consumer brands; the newsletter itself is free to readers. Partners cited include the NBA, FanDuel, Red Bull and Adidas. The company reported revenue up over 1,000% in 2021 versus the prior year and targeted $1M in total revenue for 2021.

Traction

Audience grew 350% through 2020; by 2022 the company had more than 500,000 email subscribers across its three newsletters, and it now reports more than one million members/subscribers. Revenue rose over 1,000% in 2021 year over year against a $1M annual revenue goal. Headcount is reported at 40-50. The podcast "The GIST of It" has published nearly 600 episodes.

Latest developments

In 2025 The GIST and the Canadian Olympic Committee launched a media partnership intended to increase Canadians' engagement with the Olympic movement. The company continues to publish its four-times-weekly newsletter and The GIST of It podcast, with recent coverage including the WNBA playoffs, the Women's Pro Baseball League and NFL and college football.