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Oh Captain, My Captain. Derek Jeter just announced the move of the year! Sports Illustrated is saved.
According to Yahoo Finance, ABG had previously licensed the rights to publish Sports Illustrated the magazine to a company called Arena Group — but after the Arena Group missed a recent $3.75 million payment, in January, ABG revoked the license, leading the Arena Group to institute major job cuts at the publication. Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. As part of the deal, Authentic will acquire an equity stake in Minute Media. Minute Media’s publishing license for Sports Illustrated will run 10 years, and the company has an option up it for an additional 20 years.
Little backstory on all of this. When Jeter retired, he launched The Players' Tribune in October of 2014. It's mission was dedicated to serving up first-person content from athletes, and it always delivered on fantastic stories and perspectives. After raising over $50M, the outlet was acquired by Minute Media in 2019, where Jeter continued to be directly involved in the Players’ Tribune business as the founder and he joined Minute Media’s board of directors. Flash to present day, Minute Media now has acquired FanSided, 90min and its most recent, STN Video, alongside the Players Tribune. Today, they added the historic titan in Sports Illustrated. After almost going extinct in the print form, Minute Media said it plans to continue publishing a print edition of Sports Illustrated.
Print media is a dying breed, but the nostalgic sense of Sports Illustrated was something many of us were not ready to let go. Luckily, we get to see another day, and hopefully more iconic covers for years to come.
