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Message
Sports Illustrated laying off their entire staff
Posted on 1/19/24 at 11:25 am
Posted on 1/19/24 at 11:25 am
quote:
A.J. Perez
@byajperez
BREAKING: The Arena Group gave notice that it intends to lay off all of Sports Illustrated’s staff, according to an email obtained by
@FOS
. The move comes after Authentic—the licensing group that owns Sports Illustrated—moved to terminate Arena’s licensing deal. Story to follow.
LINK
quote:
Authentic, the licensing group that purchased Sports Illustrated for $110 million from Meredith five years ago, has terminated the agreement it holds with The Arena Group to publish SI in print and digital, according to an email obtained by Front Office Sports. That move comes three weeks after Arena missed a $2.8 million payment that breached the company’s SI licensing deal, which began in 2019.
quote:
Authentic’s move to terminate Arena’s license and Arena’s eliminating SI’s staff signals a shift in the company that operates SI, weeks after Manoj Bhargava, the founder of 5-Hour Energy, introduced himself to employees of Arena, including SI, as their new leader. Since then, Authentic has had exploratory conversations with and reached out to multiple parties about the possibility of taking over Arena’s role with SI, industry sources with knowledge of the situation tell FOS.
quote:
SI, meanwhile, has struggled to find its financial foothold in the digital age, culminating in a November report that suggested its website had published AI-generated reviews without disclosure. That fiasco was followed by a head-scratching town hall in December led by Bhargava with SI and other Arena employees that spanned more than 90 minutes and during which Bhargava said, “No one is important. I am not important. … The amount of useless stuff you guys do is staggering.” Bhargava’s Simplify Inventions agreed to purchase roughly 65% of Arena in August, a $50 million deal.
quote:
On Thursday, in addition to Friday’s SI layoffs, Arena fired more than 100 employees throughout its organization. But Bhargava, who was tapped as Arena’s interim CEO on Dec. 11, didn’t make those cost-cutting moves. That’s because Bhargava stepped down from that position on Jan. 5 “to avoid any conflicts of interest,” according to an SEC filing. That conflict: Bridge Media Networks, a company completely owned by Bhargava, is in negotiations to make “a substantial investment” in Arena, according to the Arena news release that announced the layoffs on Thursday. The layoffs were carried out instead by Arena execs, its board of directors, and Jason Frankl, of FTI Consulting, who was appointed as Arena’s chief business transformation officer the same day Bhargava resigned, according to SEC filings.
LINK
This post was edited on 1/19/24 at 11:33 am
Posted on 1/19/24 at 11:27 am to 1999
Buh bye. Hopefully no more fat chicks on the swimsuit edition.
Posted on 1/19/24 at 11:27 am to 1999
Go woke, go broke!!!!!!!!!1
Kidding.
Unless that's what happened.
What happened?
Kidding.
Unless that's what happened.
What happened?
Posted on 1/19/24 at 11:29 am to Longhorn Actual
quote:
Go woke, go broke!!!!!!!!!1
Kidding.
Unless that's what happened.
What happened?
That's what happened.
Remember their magazines that everybody use to jerk it to? Those don't exist anymore
This post was edited on 1/19/24 at 11:30 am
Posted on 1/19/24 at 11:30 am to 1999
Maybe they should not have unionized in a dying industry. At least then the most talented (ostensibly) may still have a job...thus producing a better product. Instead, company probably decided the business wasn't a good investment.
Posted on 1/19/24 at 11:33 am to JetsetNuggs
quote:
That's what happened.
There are several layers to this. Am I understanding this correctly...?
A group of unionized employees works for a company that is licensed to publish SI.
That license to publish was revoked, so now the unionized employees of the former licensee are being laid off?
What caused the license to be revoked? Fat chicks in the swimsuit edition, causing slumping sales? Who made that decision, the (former) licensee? A declining market for printed periodicals?
Not challenging anything; genuinely curious as to how this played out (beyond the headline).
Posted on 1/19/24 at 11:34 am to JetsetNuggs
I think it’s more that magazine is a dying medium and sports illustrated website was way down the list of sports sites people typically visit. Can’t imagine they were making any money.
And with the internet and smartphones, teenage boys wouldn’t be jerking it to the swimsuit magazine anyway.
And with the internet and smartphones, teenage boys wouldn’t be jerking it to the swimsuit magazine anyway.
Posted on 1/19/24 at 11:34 am to 1999
Does anyone read sports magazines or magazines in general anymore since the advent of the smartphone?
Posted on 1/19/24 at 11:38 am to TheWalrus
quote:
And with the internet and smartphones, teenage boys wouldn’t be jerking it to the swimsuit magazine anyway.
1993 edition w/ Vendela Kirsebom produced many a Longhorn knuckle-child.
Posted on 1/19/24 at 11:39 am to 1999
The female shotputters are devastated. This was their year to shine…..
Posted on 1/19/24 at 11:41 am to bad93ex
the SI website was notoriously horrible.
Posted on 1/19/24 at 11:42 am to 1999
Wonder if the CIA will buy this up and hire young left wing writers to crank out bullshite to add to their Rolling Stone / Vanity Fair / Deadspin / Vogue zeitgeist of Globalist talking points
This post was edited on 1/19/24 at 11:44 am
Posted on 1/19/24 at 11:48 am to 1999
I kept a subscription out of pure nostalgia for years. Finally just canceled because there was such a tiny amount of readable material.
Hardly the only example. Traditionally male media (SI, GQ, Playboy) were all targeted and repurposed by ideologues.
Sad really. I loved those magazines decades ago. There would be a market for them in the original framework (entertainment for heterosexual men). But I felt happier not getting SI than I did receiving one. Which has to be a failure when I should be an easy sale.
Hardly the only example. Traditionally male media (SI, GQ, Playboy) were all targeted and repurposed by ideologues.
Sad really. I loved those magazines decades ago. There would be a market for them in the original framework (entertainment for heterosexual men). But I felt happier not getting SI than I did receiving one. Which has to be a failure when I should be an easy sale.
Posted on 1/19/24 at 11:50 am to 1999
I grew up reading SI. I was a subscriber for so many years. Sad what's happened, but not surprising at all. End of an era.
Posted on 1/19/24 at 11:52 am to 1999
This is sad. Their longform articles in their magazines in the 90s and early 2000s were second to none
Posted on 1/19/24 at 11:54 am to RLDSC FAN
quote:
I grew up reading SI. I was a subscriber for so many years.
Same.
It's a sad day for us Generation X'ers and old millennials.
Posted on 1/19/24 at 11:55 am to 1999
Does that include their AI avatar writers?
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