What's Going On at Sports Illustrated??

ifmanis5

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SI's IP was sold off for $110 Million back in May to Authentic Sports Brands: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/27/business/sports-illustrated-sold-meredith.html

Once that happens you expect some shakeups so last night this story was not a shock, up to 50% layoffs slated for today: https://deadspin.com/major-layoffs-are-coming-at-sports-illustrated-today-1838735368?utm_source=deadspin_twitter&utm_campaign=socialflow_deadspin_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow

Then earlier today the meeting to announce the layoffs was canceled last minute: https://deadspin.com/sports-illustrated-cancels-dreaded-transition-meetings-1838743478

Now it appears the layoffs are happening anyway: https://www.thebiglead.com/posts/sports-illustrated-writers-fired-updating-01dp9nwn8qyt

It's sad to see a brand last this get shanked in the courtyard but that is what's happening today.

Not sure of its future but The Maven brand is in control now and it's a mess: https://www.npr.org/2019/10/03/766929743/new-owners-of-sports-illustrated-set-massive-layoffs-journalists-rebel
 

Koufax

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Going the way of most print publications, I suppose. It's very sad, really. It was once the home of the very best sports writers. Maybe it still is (was), but I haven't bought an issue since, well, SOSH.
 

Mugsy's Jock

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I got a $2 subscription offer (that's for a year) a few months ago and have been pleasantly surprised at how good it still is. Not glory days, of course, and far less content... but still interesting editorially and the photography is spectacular.
 

ifmanis5

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I got a $2 subscription offer (that's for a year) a few months ago and have been pleasantly surprised at how good it still is. Not glory days, of course, and far less content... but still interesting editorially and the photography is spectacular.
Yeah, the photography is justly praised as industry leading. Peter Read Miller, Walter Iooss, Neil Leifer, Ken Regan. Many more. Incredible.
I grew up as a Sport Magazine subscriber and it was tough to see that one go down. SI dying is even more painful to watch since they were so big.
 

PedroKsBambino

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A shame for a brand many of us grew up with.

Their website has been nearly unusuable for years---design, density of links, and embedded ads made it so painful I almost never visited it. It's a tough time to be in media, and if you don't do things well across platforms it has to be almost impossible to survive.
 

gtg807y

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I bought the issue that came out after Tiger won the Masters. It was a classic SI cover, no words, just a terrific photo of him after the last putt dropped. Don't remember who wrote the article, probably Michael Bamberger, but it was good. It was the first print magazine I'd bought in a long time. I was struck by how hard it was to find, not in any grocery stores, had to find a bookstore. Guess weekly/biweekly publications don't move enough to justify other stores keeping them in stock.
 

8slim

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I find SI's saga interesting because they really don't fit the easy narrative. Obviously they're a legacy print brand, and there's an inclination to say that they died like most old media brands, and be done with it. But they can't be accused of not seeing the future coming. They launched CNN/SI in the late 90s, so they knew that having a TV presence was important. And SI.com was one of the leading sports websites of the early 2000s.

Not sure if it was leadership or what, but over the past decade SI fell apart.
 

The Social Chair

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Maven are vultures and disgusting human beings. This is the new person running SI.

The Los Angeles Times
has given prominent coverage to recent revelations of sexual harassment of women by prominent men, particularly in entertainment and media. Yet a review by NPR finds that the newspaper's own CEO and publisher, Ross Levinsohn, has been a defendant in two sexual harassment lawsuits and that his conduct in work settings over the past two decades has been called into question repeatedly by female colleagues.
 

jon abbey

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I find SI's saga interesting because they really don't fit the easy narrative. Obviously they're a legacy print brand, and there's an inclination to say that they died like most old media brands, and be done with it. But they can't be accused of not seeing the future coming. They launched CNN/SI in the late 90s, so they knew that having a TV presence was important. And SI.com was one of the leading sports websites of the early 2000s.

Not sure if it was leadership or what, but over the past decade SI fell apart.
IMO all of those companies made a massive mistake by putting so much free content on the web so early on. I was at Time Magazine when this was happening (sister mag to SI then) and was one of the most Internet-savvy people there, and I argued as strongly as I could that this was a huge mistake but of course no one cared about my opinion. I'm not saying things would be much different now if they hadn't done that, but I do think that the battle was largely lost right then.

As for SI, I am still a print subscriber and it is still quite good. This makes me sad, I have been reading SI since I was 7 in 1974, my dad's copy of the college football preview with Archie Griffin on the cover.
 

8slim

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IMO all of those companies made a massive mistake by putting so much free content on the web so early on. I was at Time Magazine when this was happening (sister mag to SI then) and was one of the most Internet-savvy people there, and I argued as strongly as I could that this was a huge mistake but of course no one cared about my opinion. I'm not saying things would be much different now if they hadn't done that, but I do think that the battle was largely lost right then.

As for SI, I am still a print subscriber and it is still quite good. This makes me sad, I have been reading SI since I was 7 in 1974, my dad's copy of the college football preview with Archie Griffin on the cover.
I hear ya. The “content wants to be free” zealots got a foothold early. A few years later they pushed reporters to break news on Twitter. It’s no surprise what’s happened since. Like you said, it may have happened anyway, but the misguided notion that ad revenue would support it all was clearly wrong.
 

Merkle's Boner

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So sad. When I was a teen I wallpapered my entire bedroom walls with a few years worth of SI covers. So many iconic shots.
There’s just no need to read about the previous week’s sports events anymore.
 

Mueller's Twin Grannies

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I have a book sitting on my shelf called "The Franchise" which is about SI (not Shane Douglas) - in the light of this news, has anyone read it and is it worth readinG?
 

jon abbey

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There’s just no need to read about the previous week’s sports events anymore.
I don't agree with this, SI's stories on last week's events (it's now every two weeks, so it's actually the last two weeks' events) are often insightful even for events one was following closely, with perspective and first-hand quotes from the people involved, gained by the extra time allowed to do the story.

But more importantly, that's not all SI is or ever was, they have tons of features, preview issues for each sport and big events, I think it's remained a very worthwhile read and hence I have never stopped.

But I will recommend yet again to everyone reading this, if you can afford to subscribe to The Athletic (it's not too much, I don't think), you should definitely do so. Among other things, it's a great way to follow the primary teams that your team is competing against, I've been reading a lot of Twins pieces in recent weeks for instance.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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IMO all of those companies made a massive mistake by putting so much free content on the web so early on. I was at Time Magazine when this was happening (sister mag to SI then) and was one of the most Internet-savvy people there, and I argued as strongly as I could that this was a huge mistake but of course no one cared about my opinion. I'm not saying things would be much different now if they hadn't done that, but I do think that the battle was largely lost right then.

As for SI, I am still a print subscriber and it is still quite good. This makes me sad, I have been reading SI since I was 7 in 1974, my dad's copy of the college football preview with Archie Griffin on the cover.
Interesting post that makes me curious about what thing.

What do you think might have happened if your POV had won the day? Honestly asking because I'm interested in the business side of things. Understand that it's all hypothetical.
 

jon abbey

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Interesting post that makes me curious about what thing.

What do you think might have happened if your POV had won the day? Honestly asking because I'm interested in the business side of things. Understand that it's all hypothetical.
It's too big a hypothetical to even say, but IMO you can't just give away your body of work for free like that, it devalues it too much. I would have tried to port subscribers to the web, put everything (or most things at least) behind a paywall, and hoped that the Time name helped it. To be honest, I expected the advertising market to have largely disappeared by now, and clearly I was wrong there, but why (most) companies pay big bucks for advertising, I have never understood, especially in the age of the internet.

It's not so comparable as my market is a tiny fraction of SI's, but I have run an experimental music label (Erstwhile) since 1999, and similarly, I would never ever agree to be part of a streaming site, I'd rather people download files illegally if that's what they're going to do, because at least then they're aware it's illegal. Spotify is legal and almost all musicians/labels make virtually nothing from it, the worst of both worlds.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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It's too big a hypothetical to even say, but IMO you can't just give away your body of work for free like that, it devalues it too much. I would have tried to port subscribers to the web, put everything (or most things at least) behind a paywall, and hoped that the Time name helped it. To be honest, I expected the advertising market to have largely disappeared by now, and clearly I was wrong there, but why (most) companies pay big bucks for advertising, I have never understood, especially in the age of the internet.

It's not so comparable as my market is a tiny fraction of SI's, but I have run an experimental music label (Erstwhile) since 1999, and similarly, I would never ever agree to be part of a streaming site, I'd rather people download files illegally if that's what they're going to do, because at least then they're aware it's illegal. Spotify is legal and almost all musicians/labels make virtually nothing from it, the worst of both worlds.
Appreciate the response. Would have been interesting to see if SI had listened to you.
 

ifmanis5

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Maven are vultures and disgusting human beings. This is the new person running SI.
Yeah, they're bad people and being asked to right a sinking ship which is likely way harder then they can handle- they couldn't even fire people the right way today. It's just a depressing story all around.
There's certainly a market for sports content but new media competition (The Athletic, Players Tribune, heck even Bleacher Report) is eating its lunch. They look like Sears as a brand and that is not where you want to be.
 

Humphrey

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Is Albert Breer still employed there? Have to admit ambivalence about him possibly surviving this purge.
 

Spacemans Bong

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Michael MacCambridge has pointed out many times that SI isn’t a sinking ship. It’s still profitable. In fact, according to the last year under Time Warner, quite profitable. The problem for years has been it’s been used as piggy bank to prop up other publications.
 
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Average Reds

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So sad. When I was a teen I wallpapered my entire bedroom walls with a few years worth of SI covers. So many iconic shots.
There’s just no need to read about the previous week’s sports events anymore.
IMO, your last sentence is the core issue.

SI didn’t die because they couldn’t carry on in a multi-platform environment. They died because they couldn’t figure out how to adjust their model to be relevant in a rapid-information culture.

And yes, The Athletic and others prove that it can be done.
 

Spacemans Bong

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Here's MacCambridge's piece that I mentioned on the back of SI going bi-weekly last year, which I think dispells the notion that SI "couldn't figure out how to adjust their model". They did. The adjustments they made just suck, and they come in a context of corporate vulturism that is sucking the lifeblood out of the magazine. I'm going to quote the three paragraph killer:

But by the late ’90s, spooked by ESPN’s ascendancy, the editors at SI seemed to lose faith in their own formula. News stories in the front became less newsy, more focused on personalities. In short, they became more like feature stories. The magazine’s justification for this change, then and ever since, has been that the sports media landscape was changing, and that SI needed to be more “forward-looking.” As one editor explained it to me at the time, “When people get their issues in the mail now, they already know the score, they’ve already seen the highlights. We need to tell them what’s going to happen next.”

It all sounds very rational, except it overlooks one salient truth: Sports Illustrated readers have always known the score by the time their issue arrives. From the very first issue, dated Aug. 16, 1954, SI’s readers knew all about the result of the magazine’s first lead story, that Dr. Roger Bannister had defeated John Landy in the “Mile of the Century” at the Commonwealth Games, in the first race between two sub-four-minute milers.

SI’s news stories were never about telling you who won, it was about telling you why and how they won, the subtle differences that separated one world-class athlete or team from another, and the endless ways that people revealed their character through competition. Furthermore, what the magazine learned, again and again in the coming decades, was that a sports event being televised only increased interest in those stories. The more people saw of a sport, the more they wanted to read about it. And SI was there, to provide the best story, the deepest understanding, the telling picture, the last word.
MacCambridge is right. The Mile of the Century was nationally televised by NBC and front page in every major US newspaper. So if people knew then, they knew about the Notre Dame-Michigan State tie, they knew about the Super Bowls, they knew about the World Series. What SI still does well is the gamer to end all gamers, the authoritative report with quotes from coaches and players on just why they ran a sweep on 3rd and 7 that picked up 12 yards and won the ballgame.

If people didn't know the result, it was one of SI's forays into the world beyond the Big Four Sports + Golf + Horse/Auto Racing. Clive Gammon was basically their rugby correspondent in the 70s, and somehow managed to wedge in an article about the Five Nations rugby tournament almost every year, as well as cover cricket (they ran a 10 page feature on Ian Botham in the middle of the 1986 World Series) and European soccer. Flicking through their old issues, they used to cover chess, swimming, rodeo, so much more than they do now.

That kind of interesting off-beat stuff is virtually never done by SI anymore. Instead it's almost endless features about stick and ball guys with the same template of how they work hard and are really determined. My "why the fuck was I reading this magazine anymore?" moment was reading a feature about Travis Kelce where they said the same shit they said about some NFL player they profiled the week before, except this had Travis Kelce dressed like a Jersey Shore cast member at a Saturday Night Fever-themed costume party. WGAS? Travis Kelce is not interesting in this context. Jocks everywhere wear open necked shirts with chains and loafers with no socks on.

Go back to the nuts and bolts. They won't, they're being sucked dry now, but they should.
 
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kenneycb

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IMO, your last sentence is the core issue.

SI didn’t die because they couldn’t carry on in a multi-platform environment. They died because they couldn’t figure out how to adjust their model to be relevant in a rapid-information culture.

And yes, The Athletic and others prove that it can be done.
The Athletic hasn’t proven anything yet. They've been around for 4 years and have yet to turn a profit. Yes some of that is due to expansion but let’s not crown their asses just yet.
 

joe dokes

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As for SI, I am still a print subscriber and it is still quite good. This makes me sad, I have been reading SI since I was 7 in 1974, my dad's copy of the college football preview with Archie Griffin on the cover.
As am I. And after a down period, it has been quite good for the last 5-8 years or so. I got an 11th birthday gift subscription in 1972. Joe Torre on the cover after the MLB mini-strike to start the season.
26131

But the first one I remember seeing was at a relative's house in summer 1970, with Tony C. on the cover. Most people here know that one.
 

InstaFace

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It's too big a hypothetical to even say, but IMO you can't just give away your body of work for free like that, it devalues it too much. I would have tried to port subscribers to the web, put everything (or most things at least) behind a paywall, and hoped that the Time name helped it. To be honest, I expected the advertising market to have largely disappeared by now, and clearly I was wrong there, but why (most) companies pay big bucks for advertising, I have never understood, especially in the age of the internet.

It's not so comparable as my market is a tiny fraction of SI's, but I have run an experimental music label (Erstwhile) since 1999, and similarly, I would never ever agree to be part of a streaming site, I'd rather people download files illegally if that's what they're going to do, because at least then they're aware it's illegal. Spotify is legal and almost all musicians/labels make virtually nothing from it, the worst of both worlds.
I'm anything but a luddite, and I quite agree with you - it's one thing to give a free taste, or even make free an occasional article that's blowing up, just as a marketing promotion. But in the long run, "give it away for free to build audience" misled that audience as to their expectations, and you couldn't pull the rug from under them to go paywall when they had a dozen free alternatives. Once the CPM for online ads collapsed, there were always only two long-run business models that were viable:

1) What we see today, which is X free articles per month, and monthly subscription options that include a pretty cheap online-only option, for each content site

2) A microtransactions platform, i.e. pay $0.10 per article. The problem with this is that a payment gateway charges ~$0.30 per credit card transaction regardless of size, which is why we have credit-card minimums at gas stations. Many, many people have thus tried to start a micropayments platform where you pre-fund a reasonable amount of money onto the platform, Skype-style, and they dole it out to the content sites (or whatever use case you like) as-needed and then have you top-up when necessary. They have all failed, but if a bunch of content sites had banded together to launch on one platform like this early on, it definitely would have worked and changed the face of online content.
 

geoflin

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I have been a print subscriber for over 50 years. I have become increasingly dissatisfied over the past few years and yesterday's announcement of staff layoffs was the last straw. I cancelled my subscription last night. The magazine which I have been receiving recently and the one I would be receiving in the future is not what I paid for so I'm out.
 

ifmanis5

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The Ringer has a good recap of the crazy day: https://www.theringer.com/2019/10/3/20897883/sports-illustrated-layoffs-maven-meredith-media
Deadspin’s Barry Petchesky reported that SI staffers received invites to one of two “transition” meetings on Thursday. The staffers figured out that one group was going to be told they still had jobs and the second was going to start sending “Reaching out…” emails to friendly editors.

Those meetings were cancelled. Later that afternoon, the meetings were reinstated, and somewhere between 35 to 40 percent of the staff was laid off, including writers like Andrew Sharp, Paul “Uni Watch” Lukas, and Joan Niesen. Also, staffers found a poster indicating Maven was throwing some kind of party that night.
 

John Marzano Olympic Hero

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It looks like Uni-Watcher Paul Lukas was part of the purge too. Which, while I read his stuff but think he's a doofus, really sucks. I guess he started there six weeks ago.

The way this whole thing went down just sucks. Maybe we're to blame for this, I think most of us has subscribed to SI at some point and at some point let our subscriptions lapse, but at the same time, like Bonger said, SI made a profit. The way this vampire company came in and stripped it bare is just shitty. My guess is the magazine will completely close shop within two years, three tops.
 

Patriot_Reign

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Depressing that in today's age entities like Maven thrive in the business of slashing & dismantling once proud institutions.
 

PedroKsBambino

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It's too big a hypothetical to even say, but IMO you can't just give away your body of work for free like that, it devalues it too much. I would have tried to port subscribers to the web, put everything (or most things at least) behind a paywall, and hoped that the Time name helped it. To be honest, I expected the advertising market to have largely disappeared by now, and clearly I was wrong there, but why (most) companies pay big bucks for advertising, I have never understood, especially in the age of the internet.

It's not so comparable as my market is a tiny fraction of SI's, but I have run an experimental music label (Erstwhile) since 1999, and similarly, I would never ever agree to be part of a streaming site, I'd rather people download files illegally if that's what they're going to do, because at least then they're aware it's illegal. Spotify is legal and almost all musicians/labels make virtually nothing from it, the worst of both worlds.
In retrospect, I think there were only two winning plays available, with a caveated third path:

1. If you have a very strong brand and value prop, you can go behind a paywall and be profitable based on subscribers. This is how NYT does it, WaPo, etc. Salon tried, and it has been a mixed bag. SI very likely had the brand to do this, though one never knows precisely how it would have played out.

2. Optimize for ad revenue and set costs according to what you can generate. This is how most everyone on the web who succeeds does it.

3. Accept it is a necessary but not profitable element of a larger brand and make your money in other ways. This is what I think SI thought it was doing, but it misunderstood the long-term viability and profitability of print. It's a little hard to think of someone who has done this well indefinitely, but it is what NYT, WaPo, Atlantic did for periods of time before shifting models. It is to a degree what ESPN did as well. To do this one you need to understand how to adjust at the right time, which SI (or more likely Time) did slowly.
 

coremiller

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I hear ya. The “content wants to be free” zealots got a foothold early. A few years later they pushed reporters to break news on Twitter. It’s no surprise what’s happened since. Like you said, it may have happened anyway, but the misguided notion that ad revenue would support it all was clearly wrong.

It's too big a hypothetical to even say, but IMO you can't just give away your body of work for free like that, it devalues it too much. I would have tried to port subscribers to the web, put everything (or most things at least) behind a paywall, and hoped that the Time name helped it. To be honest, I expected the advertising market to have largely disappeared by now, and clearly I was wrong there, but why (most) companies pay big bucks for advertising, I have never understood, especially in the age of the internet.

It's not so comparable as my market is a tiny fraction of SI's, but I have run an experimental music label (Erstwhile) since 1999, and similarly, I would never ever agree to be part of a streaming site, I'd rather people download files illegally if that's what they're going to do, because at least then they're aware it's illegal. Spotify is legal and almost all musicians/labels make virtually nothing from it, the worst of both worlds.
Isn't the issue not that the ad market has disappeared, but that Facebook and Google get all that ad revenue rather than the content companies?
 

8slim

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Isn't the issue not that the ad market has disappeared, but that Facebook and Google get all that ad revenue rather than the content companies?
It's both. The programmatic display and video ad marketplace has been reduced to being bargain-basement commodities, thus FB and Google are the only ones who have the massive scale to generate real revenue from it. 90% of new digital ad dollars go to those 2 companies.
 

Oil Can Dan

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So what’s the most likely scenario here? These Maven bros will likely have the doors closed in under two years, and then hopefully some period of time later some entity will buy the rights and SI will come back. Right? The SI brand is iconic. It’s bigger than Sport, or Baseball Weekly, or any other sports publication. Like 60 seconds after Foulke got Renteria to ground out to second I was thinking about the Special Edition SI that I’d finally NEED TO HAVE (framed and hanging on my wall as I type, btw). It’s just a matter of time until some competent entity/people down the line buy the branding rights and take the scraps of what’s left at that point and convert this back to the great thing that it was.

I think we should start a SoSH savings account to do this. We all put in a little bit each month, and once the bros have run it into the ground we’ll be ready to rock. Let’s do this!
 

Caspir

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I got a sub for 250 frequent flier miles that were expiring and my son loves getting those magazines. It’s a real throwback and he enjoys reading about the Super Bowl or whatever Boston sports topic is in there. This is sad. I found a box at my mom’s house last year that has swimsuit editions from Tyra Banks to Beyoncé and more. Such a staple of my youth, and so sad to see it go by the wayside.
 

joe dokes

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So what’s the most likely scenario here? These Maven bros will likely have the doors closed in under two years, and then hopefully some period of time later some entity will buy the rights and SI will come back. Right? The SI brand is iconic. It’s bigger than Sport, or Baseball Weekly, or any other sports publication. Like 60 seconds after Foulke got Renteria to ground out to second I was thinking about the Special Edition SI that I’d finally NEED TO HAVE (framed and hanging on my wall as I type, btw). It’s just a matter of time until some competent entity/people down the line buy the branding rights and take the scraps of what’s left at that point and convert this back to the great thing that it was.

I think we should start a SoSH savings account to do this. We all put in a little bit each month, and once the bros have run it into the ground we’ll be ready to rock. Let’s do this!
I reupped a few weeks ago, but haven't paid the bill yet. I probably won't. There's a few dollars of seed money.:cool:
 

dcmissle

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This magazine is a cultural treasure. It should have been recognized as such. This is one of those circumstances where somebody worth x billion ideally should have stepped up, stabilized it and put it on a path to sustainability with a model that makes sense going forward.

Now, I just hope someone worthy is able to buy the intellectual property to hit the re-set button at some point down the road.
 

ifmanis5

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This magazine is a cultural treasure. It should have been recognized as such. This is one of those circumstances where somebody worth x billion ideally should have stepped up, stabilized it and put it on a path to sustainability with a model that makes sense going forward.

Now, I just hope someone worthy is able to buy the intellectual property to hit the re-set button at some point down the road.
Hopefully The Maven people will realize they're in over their head and flip the asset to someone who cares about the SI legacy and can protect it going forward. There is still a demand for this content, they have to figure out how to do it on a tighter budget and in a new digital landscape.
 

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One of the things that SI was known for was the brilliant photography; stuff you couldn’t get anywhere else.

The internet has made images cheap. I don’t know how SI recovers from that basic fact.
 

Spacemans Bong

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$25-30,000 based on 100 blog posts a month and three videos a day. Yeah, that is basically taking a fat piss all over minimum wage laws in many states. I doubt the bonuses would make this wage scale legal.

So in short, Maven's business model is to hire slaves and suck the company dry and probably run off with the money before the class-action lawsuit comes their way. Vile.
 

B H Kim

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Washington, DC
So what’s the most likely scenario here? These Maven bros will likely have the doors closed in under two years, and then hopefully some period of time later some entity will buy the rights and SI will come back. Right? The SI brand is iconic. It’s bigger than Sport, or Baseball Weekly, or any other sports publication. Like 60 seconds after Foulke got Renteria to ground out to second I was thinking about the Special Edition SI that I’d finally NEED TO HAVE (framed and hanging on my wall as I type, btw). It’s just a matter of time until some competent entity/people down the line buy the branding rights and take the scraps of what’s left at that point and convert this back to the great thing that it was.

I think we should start a SoSH savings account to do this. We all put in a little bit each month, and once the bros have run it into the ground we’ll be ready to rock. Let’s do this!

Unfortunately, I think the most likely path is that of Newsweek. The name will continue to have some value, but it ends up completely separated from the actual editorial operation that gave the name its cache, and I can’t see anyone willing to invest the capital needed to rebuild that operation.
 

Bunt4aTriple

Member (member)
Silver Supporter
SoSH Member
Jul 15, 2005
4,347
North Yarmouth, ME
$25-30,000 based on 100 blog posts a month and three videos a day. Yeah, that is basically taking a fat piss all over minimum wage laws in many states. I doubt the bonuses would make this wage scale legal.

So in short, Maven's business model is to hire slaves and suck the company dry and probably run off with the money before the class-action lawsuit comes their way. Vile.
The Deadspin article says that the fan site owners are required to register as an LLC in an attempt to evade the legal troubles SB Nation faced.
 

Spacemans Bong

chapeau rose
SoSH Member
The Deadspin article says that the fan site owners are required to register as an LLC in an attempt to evade the legal troubles SB Nation faced.
But SBNation had them file as independent contractors in order to evade the same law, and that hasn't flown in court so far. I'm no lawyer but a judge has to know an end run around the law when he sees one.
 

RIFan

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 19, 2005
3,087
Rhode Island
I got my first subscription as a gift while in high school. I've kept the subscription for the last 35 or so years, but I cancelled today. I doubt they'll ever admit to the number of cancellations, but it has to be substantial.
 

E5 Yaz

Transcends message boarding
Lifetime Member
SoSH Member
Apr 25, 2002
90,014
Oregon
This isn't about the job losses, but in a way maybe it is. The website's weekly NFL Ranking were sealed today.

There are 8 voters listed.
The Patriots (first overall) have 4 first-place votes and 6 second-place votes.
There are 8 voters listed.
One voter named Green Bay first.
No other teams are shown as having a first-place vote
The 49ers are fifth.
The 49ers highest vote is 10th.

There are other similar mistakes throughout. Perhaps the person in charge of data-checking this thing was laid off.

https://www.si.com/nfl/2019/10/08/nfl-power-rankings-week-6-patriots-49ers-packers
 

j-man

Member
Dec 19, 2012
3,646
Arkansas
its dead i am subbed through 2020 i been getting it since march 1998 there is only 1 way to save it make it a preseason preview magazine and add the swimsuit with it 6 preseason isses a year with 5 extra ones NFL/SUPERBOWLREWIEW Feb BaseBall march NFL Draft apr swimsuit may where are they now june CollegeFootball July Profootball Aug NHL Sept NBA Oct College Basketball Nov year in review Dec it will not happen but going monthly couild save it plus with only 3 preseason mag on every main sport it couild work