Sports Illustrated will soon be no more. The Wall Street Journal reported:
Many Sports Illustrated staffers were told they were being laid off on Friday, according to the union of the publication, putting the future of the once-prestigious magazine in question. The union said that it was notified by the magazine’s publisher that it intended to “lay off a significant number, possibly all” of Sports Illustrated’s unionized staffers. “This is another difficult day in what has been a difficult four years for Sports Illustrated under Arena Group (previously The Maven) stewardship,” the union said in a statement posted on X. Arena Group didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday. The union said it didn’t know the exact number of employees affected by the layoffs. It said it has more than 80 unionized employees at Sports Illustrated. In a regulatory filing on Friday, Arena Group said it lost the license to publish Sports Illustrated after the company missed a payment to its licensor. Arena, whose publications include TheStreet, Men’s Journal and Dealbreaker, said Sports Illustrated owner Authentic Brands Group had notified the company Thursday it was terminating its licensing agreement for the legacy sports magazine, effective immediately. The terminated agreement comes after Arena missed a $3.8 million quarterly payment to ABG. Under the terms of the agreement, ABG has the right to end the deal if a payment is missed. Rest of article.
Kingfish note: Well, let's give the publication a proper sendoff.
20 comments:
I haven't looked at a SI magazine in a long time, but I do remember that swimsuit edition with Kathy Ireland on the cover. Those eyes!!!
Went woke, went broke.
College football is hotter than ever, the NFL is printing money, and these woke "journalists" can't figure out how to break even. Of course.
Yep, they should have never messed with the Swimsuit Edition.
But they just had to put fat girls in there and try to force us to like it.
A combination of woke and unions spells total disaster!
I guess their fired staffers will be cracking open a case of Bud Light in celebration.
40-years-olds and under didn't participate in competitive/team sports at a fraction of previous generations. "Competition" was too harsh so everyone got a participation trophy and found other outlets - like video games.
"Getting the girl" is also a long since dead concept that too many soy boys don't even think about making the effort to achieve if there's an X Box nearby.
Testosterone has literally been on the decline in young men for the last 35 years, and the sunsetting of SI will merely be a minor manifestation of that fact. Porn is readily accessible and free. Go on a date? Too much work. Get married and build a family? Forget about it. I'll live with Mum and Da forever.
Maybe SI will be bought by Gannet and be made relevant once again, just like they did
with the Clarion-Ledger.
Yep, go woke and end up broke...I just hope and pray the NFL and ESPN are the next victims...
Here's a toast to Frank Deford & the glory days of Sports Illustrated. I still miss them.
What was wrong with my post criticizing these stupid Trump ass-kissers with limited vocabulary???
There are way too many "sports journalists" for SI to remain profitable. The bar to entry is extremely low. Have you heard SuperTalk in the afternoon lately??
This will help the environment by having fewer sticky magazine pages going to landfills.
@ 4:25 PM -- Stupid is as stupid does.
Quoted from WSJ……do a little research before you mouth off…….Authentic is here to ensure that the brand of Sports Illustrated, which includes its editorial arm, continues to thrive as it has for the past nearly 70 years. We are confident that going forward the brand will continue to evolve and grow in a way that serves sports news readers, sports fans, and consumers," Authentic Brands Group said in a statement.
Nobody is interested in this.
10:59, I have done the research, and I stand by my comment.
-2:41
@12:15 Looking at Facebook is not research.
Damn. For this mid-40 year old, SI was considered an icon of published sports reporting & photography throughout the 1980s to the early 2000s. The Swimsuit editions (of old) were a great bonus!
Then along came the great expansion of technology, widespread internet, and for the Swimsuit issues, inclusion of the heftier bodies.
And as 5:40 points out, the market of so-called sports “journalists,” writers, bloggers, reporters, etc., appears to be as easy to get into as it is to get a job bagging groceries at the local Piggly Wiggly. So much content, so little true talent. That, and ESPN as well as ESPN radio (and that includes the locals) is oversaturated with opinionated talking heads, many of which have large egos but again, if they weren’t sports talkers who simply have a platform, they’d be filling bags and carts at the end of a Piggly Wiggly checkout line somewhere.
What a shame.
Many great points from several of the previous commenters.
Now, I wonder what value any of the vintage mint condition copies that I own will become? Numerous covers with Jordan, others with John Elway, Mike Tyson, Tiger Woods, Nolan Ryan, just to name a handful. KF or anyone else, any thoughts about these as “collector’s items” for the future?
6:59 - I suggest individually bagged, boxed, darkness, and time. Also, I think some of your latest editions, when circulation has been low, may counter-intuitively be some of your best money. Figuring that less magazines were printed, so the number available for collecting is lower and would be more valuable per magazine.
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