Sports Illustrated Just Laid Off Most of Its Staff

Since 2019, the Arena Group has paid a licensing fee to have the rights to publish Sports Illustrated, owned by Authentic Brands Group. Earlier this month, red flags started popping up that indicated Arena had missed a $3.75 million quarterly payment on the first of the year, with a warning issued from ABG that it could nix Arena's 10-year contract, "absent a cure." On Friday, a big development on that front: Almost all of Sports Illustrated's staff, likely including its entire roster of writers and editors, has been laid off, in a move that "essentially could spell the end of a publication that for decades was the gold standard of sports journalism," per the Washington Post.

A note to staff relayed that some terminations would take effect ASAP, while others could stick around another 90 days. ABG scooped up the SI brand in 2019 for $110 million from Meredith Corp., licensing the rights to publish SI soon after to Arena, then called Maven. Things haven't been going well for the company and magazine of late: Sports Illustrated took flak late last year after articles on its website, contracted out to a vendor, were written under bylines of people who didn't exist, although the AP noted that the magazine "denied a published report that stories themselves were written by an artificial intelligence tool." Meanwhile, Manoj Bhargava, Arena's interim CEO since only Dec. 11, resigned from his new role on Jan. 5, per Front Office Sports.

ABG hasn't clued workers in if it will license SI's rights to another firm, or if the magazine even has a future anymore. In a statement, Jason Frankl, Arena's chief business transformation officer, said that his "immediate focus is to collaboratively design a growth-oriented media company, ensuring the financial stability necessary to cultivate and grow the brands we cherish." He adds that the job cuts were "regrettably necessary." On Friday, following the layoff announcement, the union for the magazine's staff put out a statement, calling it "another difficult day in what has been a difficult four years for Sports Illustrated under Arena Group." The union asked ABG to step in to "ensure the continued publication of SI and allow it to serve our audience in the way it has for nearly 70 years." (More Sports Illustrated stories.)