Latest owner of Sports Illustrated to lay off 'possibly all' of its staff

Some employees will be terminated immediately, and paid in lieu of the applicable notice period under the [the union contract]. Employees with a last working day of today will be contacted by the People team soon. Other employees will be expected to work through the end of the notice period, and will receive additional information shortly.”

The Sports Illustrated Union and the NewsGuild of New York released a joint statement on the layoffs, expressing that they intend to continue the fight for its workers and demanding that The Arena Group continues publishing:

Founded in 1954, Sports Illustrated was owned by Time Inc., the magazine and book publishing behemoth, for much of its existence. SI was the bible of sports, with feature-length profiles on the biggest newsmakers in the field as well as its annual swimsuit edition, which helped amplify the careers of many female models. 

While not all of its content as aged well over time, it was still the outlet that gave us work from venerated sportswriters such as Sally Jenkins, Jack MacCallum, Peter King, the late Frank Deford, the late Ralph Wiley and many more.

However, even before what appears to be its final days, the publication found itself playing catch-up as the internet became more widely available in the mid through late 1990s. Like most legacy magazines and newspapers, SI took quite a long time not only to build its digital presence but also to adapt its voice online as more. It found itself struggling to compete with ESPN's irreverence online with ESPN.com, Page 2, Grantland and Andscape (formerly The Undefeated), and "the blog era" of the 2000s and 2010s brought many more outlets into the fold that helped reshape sports conversations and coverage.

Time Inc. merged with Warner Communications in the early 1990s to form what was then Time Warner, which also took control of the Turner cable empire. After that media conglomerate grew and then contracted through the 2010s, the Time brands were sold to Meredith in 2014 as Time Warner effectively replaced SI with the digital sports platform Bleacher Report as its sports journalism brand. Four years later, Meredith sold SI to Authentic Brands, which issued a ten-year publishing license to TheMaven, which was rebranded as The Arena Group.

There probably would have been some changes to SI going into 2024 as the media and tech industries continue to be roiled by mass layoffs in attempts for companies to "right size" themselves for shareholders. However, the late November exposure of Arena's use of artificial intelligence for some of SI's posts might have made the decision for Authentic Brands.