Sports Illustrated Has Laid Off a ‘Possibly All’ Editorial Staffers, Union Says
variety.comTodd Spangler NY Digital Editor Sports Illustrated has been hit with mass layoffs — which will potentially eliminate the entire editorial team of the nearly 70-year-old sports media brand.
The union that reps SI’s editorial workers, which is affiliated with the NewsGuild of New York, said in a post on X that on Friday staff members of Sports Illustrated were notified that its parent company, the Arena Group, “is planning to lay off a significant number, possibly all, of the Guild-represented workers at SI, a result of Authentic Brands Group (ABG) revoking Arena’s license to publish SI.” In 2019, Authentic Brands Group purchased Sports Illustrated from Meredith for $110 million (before Meredith was acquired by IAC’s Dotdash).
When ABG bought SI, it laid off more than 30% of the publication’s staff. ABG licensed media and publishing rights for the SI brand to Maven, which changed its name in 2021 to Arena Group.
According to a Washington Post report, the Arena Group missed a recent payment for the SI publishing rights, whereupon ABG revoked the license.
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