We may be in the final moments of the former partnership of The Arena Group and Sports Illustrated. The legendary sports magazine’s former publisher will now cease publishing all content under the SI umbrella and any content produced by the tech company will fall under a new banner — Athlon Sports.
According to Front Office Sports’ A.J. Perez, Arena officially lost the rights to SI on Monday and, now that Minute Media has picked up the license, the final steps to completely remove Arena’s influence over SI are in motion. Now, the Arena Group logo no longer appears on Sports Illustrated’s website:
Earlier, Perez reported on the whereabouts of Sports Illustrated FanNation, SI’s fan-centric blog center, that was still helmed by Arena contractors. FanNation’s leadership have now met with both Minute Media and Arena Group execs to agree on the writers’ collective futures. Perez says FanNation and Minute will meet again sometime Thursday to push the issue further. He also reported a third entity has entered the equation, as former Arena CEO James Heckman reached out to many FanNation writers to join a new enterprise called Roundtable Inc.
With this, the long, perilous saga of The Arena Group and Sports Illustrated may finally be at its end. From the ashes comes a new entity, Athlon Sports, which The Arena Group no doubt hopes can be the next great sports site.
