Deal keeps Sports Illustrated in business

What it means for writers, others at SI remains to be seen.

Sports Illustrated will continue operations after the company that owns the brand agreed with a new publisher for its print and digital products.

Minute Media took over Monday after reaching a licensing agreement with Authentic Brands Group. On Jan. 19, Authentic announced that it was revoking The Arena Group’s publishing license after Arena failed to make a quarterly payment.

Authentic had been in negotiations with Arena, Minute Media and other pub- lishing entities over the past two months.

Authentic will acquire an equity stake in Minute Media, which also publishes the online sites The Players’ Tri- bune, FanSided and 90min. Other terms, including the length of the deal, were not announced.

“Sports Illustrated is the gold standard for sports journalism and has been for nearly 70 years across both print and digital media. The weight and power of that distinction cannot be under- stated. At Minute Media, our focus will be to take that leg- acy into new, emerging chan- nels, enhancing visibility, commercial viability, and sustainable impact, all while ensuring that the SI team is inspired to flourish in this new era of media,” Minute Media founder and CEO Asaf Peled said in a statement.

What this means for the writers and others who produce Sports Illustrated remains to be seen. Min- ute Media will begin meet- ing with SI employees over the next couple of weeks as it determines how much of the staff it will retain, according to a person with knowledge of the transi- tion. The person spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak publicly about them.

SI co-Editor-in-Chief Stephen Cannella told employees in a memo to continue operating as if it were business as usual for now.

Sports Illustrated has had a rough six years. It was acquired by Meredith Publishing in 2018 as part of the purchase of Time Inc., which started the magazine in 1954. Less than a year later, Meredith sold the magazine’s intellectual property to Authentic for $110 million. Authentic owns the intellectual property of many brands and stars, including Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Muhammad Ali and Reebok.

Once a weekly publication, Sports Illustrated was reduced to biweekly publishing in 2018 and became a monthly in 2020.