Licensing Group Behind Sports Illustrated Says Brand Will Continue Despite Reports Of Mass Layoffs

January 19th is the day that marked another major change, but not necessarily the end of Sports Illustrated as most, if not all, of its staff reportedly received layoff notices on Friday. The mass exodus comes after Authentic Brands Group -- the licensing entity that owns Sports Illustrated -- terminated the licensing deal it had with The Arena Group to publish SI in print and digital.

The reasoning behind the termination of the licensing agreement reportedly stems from a recently missed payment. According to Front Office Sports, just three weeks ago Arena missed a $2.8 million payment to Authentic that "breached the company's" licensing deal. The termination also comes less than two months after it was alleged that SI was publishing articles using artificial intelligence (AI) written by AI-generated authors.

The Arena Group - formerly known as Maven - paid Authentic $45 million upfront as part of what was a 10-year licensing agreement that began in May 2019. Arena reportedly fired more than 100 employees of its own on Thursday.

Later on Friday, Authentic made the following statement:

Yesterday, The Arena Group’s license to serve as the publisher of Sports Illustrated was terminated as a result of the company’s failure to pay its quarterly license fee despite being given a notice of breach and an opportunity to cure the breach. Authentic is here to ensure that the brand of Sports Illustrated, which includes its editorial arm, continues to thrive as it has for the past nearly 70 years.
We are confident that going forward the brand will continue to evolve and grow in a way that serves sports news readers, sports fans, and consumers. We are committed to ensuring that the traditional ad-supported Sports Illustrated media pillar has best in class stewardship to preserve the complete integrity of the brand’s legacy.

Richard Deitsch of The Athletic obtained the email that Sports Illustrated staffers received on Friday which stated, "we will be laying off staff that work on the SI brand" noting Authentic's move to terminate the license with Arena.

The wording of the email is not straightforward as it doesn't clearly state every employee of SI's will be terminated, but staffers told Front Office Sports that they expect the layoffs to "cut deep."

The Sports Illustrated Guild took to X, formerly Twitter, and shared a statement from the magazine's NFL editor and unit chair, Mitch Goldich. He confirmed that employees were notified about the planned layoffs.

"Earlier today the workers of Sports Illustrated were notified that 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," the statement read in part.

READ: SPORTS ILLUSTRATED PUBLISHER FIRES CEO AFTER POSTING AI CONTENT BY FAKE AUTHORS

Just like many 70-year-old companies and publications tend to do, Sports Illustrated has run into its fair share of hard times over the last decade or so. The overwhelming majority of the tribulations had everything to do with the many different management and ownership groups coming through what felt like a revolving door and very little to do with writers, editors, and content creators that make the brand what it is.

With the news of what appears to be one of the more massive sets of layoffs the sports media landscape has seen in a while, readers of the magazine and website paid tribute.

Sports Illustrated's first issue dates back to August 16, 1954 with the cover photo showing Milwaukee Braves' star Eddie Mathews swinging away in the batter's box in front of New York Giants catcher We Westrum.