A contentious breakup between Sports Illustrated and the publisher led to the magazine halting production of its May issue, leaving more than 1 million subscribers with empty mailboxes last month, the Post reported. Ta.
Arena Group, whose license was revoked in January after failing to make quarterly payments of $3.75 million to rights holder Authentic Brands, has refused to hand over its subscriber list to new publisher Minute Media. three people familiar with the situation told The Post.
According to the contract, Arena, which is run by 5-Hour Energy founder Manoj Bhargava, does not believe it needs to share its SI subscriber list, the people said.
Authentic is suing Arena for $48 million for canceling the remaining three years of its contract, and Bhargava could use the subscriber list as part of his bargaining chip in potential settlement talks. one source speculates.
Arena Group and Authentic Brands declined to comment.
Minute Media did not return calls.
The disruption, believed to be the first skipped issue in the magazine’s 70-year history, was compounded by Arena’s firing of about 100 SI employees as part of its negotiating tactics with Authentic. It took a while.
As The Post previously reported, Bhargava scrapped the print version of the iconic magazine after learning Authentic owner Jamie Salter was leaning toward giving the rights to Minute Media. He even threatened to do so.
The last monthly issue printed was the April 2024 Baseball Preview edition, featuring Shohei Ohtani on the cover, and was mailed to SI’s approximately 1 million paid and free subscribers before the takeover. Arena continued to publish SI while attempting to recover rights after the license ended.
The May issue is not listed on the cover page of SI’s website. According to officials, the next issue will be the February issue in June and July.
Last May’s cover featured a preview of the NFL Draft, and separate issues ran in June and July.
SI charges $20 per month for 12 issues per year. The Treasure of Sports Journalism was published weekly for decades before being licensed to Arena Group in 2016, and became a monthly magazine in 2020.
Minute Media, which owns Players Tribune, FanSide and the soccer news platform 90 Minutes, founded by Derek Jeter, signed a 10-year rights deal in March to acquire SI staff, including high-paid talent like Tom Verducci. Most of them were rehired. Pat Ford and John Wertheim. Their byline appears in a recent article published on SI.com.
The initial transition got off to a rocky start as SI’s website went dark for several hours after moving from Arena Group to Minute Media.
The company publishes about 300,000 copies of SI magazine’s popular swimsuit edition, which hit newsstands this week and featured past cover girls such as Kathy Ireland, Brittany Mahomes and Gayle King.
Minute Media acquired the rights to the swimsuit edition as part of a licensing agreement with Authentic, but the special issue was not intended to be sent to subscribers, the people said.
People close to the situation say the backlog over the subscriber list is weighing on the privately held company’s profits.
“This is a rough transition,” the official said.
“Minute is struggling to make SI profitable and is incurring large printing-related losses.”
