Sports Illustrated was an institution. It was an aspiration for athletes just as much as it was for journalists. Whether it was getting a cover or a byline, if Sports Illustrated put you in the spotlight, but meant you were special.
Those days appear to be over. The Arena Group, who operated SI in a deal with the brand’s owner, laid off the publication’s entire staff last week. It throws the future into doubt.
When Authentic Brands bought Sports Illustrated in 2019, it had no interest in journalism. The company wanted to launch SI branded hotels and sportswear. All Authentic Brands wanted was an iconic name and logo. Now, that’s all Sports Illustrated is.
Now, being fair to Authentic Brands, what Sports Illustrated was in 2019 is very different from what it was in 1989. It wasn’t nearly as ubiquitous. The name still carried weight, but it was no longer the publication of record for most sports fans.
It was still an institution though and in 2024, there are fewer and fewer of those in the sports media. Fewer institutions means pockets are not as deep as they used to be. The collapse of Sports Illustrated is just the latest sign that if you create content of any sort for sports fans, you are going to have to be more creative and entrepreneurial in the years ahead.
Pat McAfee’s ESPN deal, whatever it’s actually worth, is the product of a bygone era. Dan Patrick, Keith Olberman, Stuart Scott, Tony Kornheiser, and Michael Wilbon all became stars during a time when audiences were not as segmented as they are now. There weren’t thousands of websites, podcasts and YouTube channels catering to people’s individual sports tastes when those men were coming into the national conscious.
Front Office Sports’ Michael McCarthy predicted that Stephen A. Smith will get a new contract this year that will make his annual salary $20 million. I don’t think it’s impossible, but if ESPN shells out that much money, it would be doing so based on a sports entertainment landscape that doesn’t exist anymore.
In 2022, Carl Scott of Meadowlark Media told the BSM Summit that in podcasting, “niches get the riches.” No matter what kind of sports content you create, it may be good advice to remember going forward. There will always be the general sports fan that will leave ESPN or FS1 on in the background, but as costs of living continue to rise, “what I really want” will take priority for consumers trying to decide what is worth the price.
Think of all the content creators that have chosen to do something they own as opposed to relying on a paycheck written by a large corporation. Even people like Colin Cowherd, who didn’t leave the corporate sports media entirely, have staked their own claims. There are seven, eight and nine-figure success stories, but they aren’t all multi-million dollar businesses.
Plenty of these entrepreneurial content creators are making a respectable living by asking their most devoted fans to pay a monthly subscription fee. If it is a way to guarantee that they get the kind of discussion of their favorite teams and games that they want, the fans are happy to do so. I’m a devoted college football fan, and I pay for access to extra episodes of my favorite podcasts and blogs because I can’t stand the kind of coverage the sport gets on more general interest sports shows. I cringe watching the industry’s stars talk about college football in a way that makes it clear they do not actually watch it.
Some of the biggest brands in sports media are owned and operated by companies that know nothing about content creation. They’re motivated by costs, not profit. No level of investment will ever be “worth it” to them. That is what happened to Sports Illustrated. That is what we have watched happened to countless sports radio stations in markets large and small.
Are the days of getting rich in sports media over? Not for everyone, but the people that can generate generational wealth are already few and far between and there will likely be even fewer of them in the years ahead.
Do you have an audience? Do you have advertisers that believe in you and that you have worked with for a long time? Sports talk is a format built to survive as radio struggles, but economic decisions for sports stations are going to be made based on the industry as a whole. Maybe it’s time to learn all you can about Patreon and Substack and start working on a business plan for going solo.
We’ve seen it in Dallas, Philadelphia, San Antonio, and Birmingham just to name a few markets. Hosts read the tea leaves and decided to give up some certainties for a future that gives them more control.
There has never been a more unpredictable time to be working in the media industry. How could something like Sports Illustrated continue to thrive in a landscape overrun with competitors? Even if there is no single knockout blow, each one of them chipped away at a segment of SI’s audience every day. Even the company’s best-known and least sports-related product, the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, lost cultural significance in a world where free porn is always just a couple of clicks away.
Economic conditions and innovation are not necessarily working against the media business, but big companies are not built to adapt quickly. Not only are there a lot of moving parts, but it’s human nature to believe that your own heritage and history matters to everyone else. That isn’t the case. The audience is as self-obsessed as these companies are. They aren’t loyal to a logo or to call letters. They will go where their favorite content is easiest to find.
At the end, Sports Illustrated didn’t mean what it once did, but it still mattered. Talented people still worked there breaking news and putting the world into perspective for readers. It became the victim of an industry populated more and more with leaders that know nothing about their audience’s priorities or tastes.
Things are not as bleak as they may seem. They are just different now. Smaller, more nimble operations have never been better positioned than they are right now. As a content creator, if you can be comfortable with making a living but probably not a fortune, you have never had so many options.
Demetri Ravanos is a columnist and features writer for Barrett Media. He is also the creator of The Sports Podcast Festival, and a previous host on the Chewing Clock and Media Noise podcasts. He occasionally fills in on stations across the Carolinas in addition to hosting Panthers and College Football podcasts. His radio resume includes stops at WAVH and WZEW in Mobile, AL, WBPT in Birmingham, AL and WBBB, WPTK and WDNC in Raleigh, NC.
You can find him on Twitter @DemetriRavanos or reach him by email at DemetriTheGreek@gmail.com.
