Minute Media Refines Portfolio to Rebuild Sports Illustrated Brand

The sports media company Minute Media, owner of The Players Tribune, FanNation and 90min, is making several changes to its portfolio designed to streamline its assets and rebuild the Sports Illustrated brand, after acquiring its licensing rights in March.

On Thursday, Minute Media announced it is rebranding FanNation to On SI. It has also folded its sports media franchise, The Big Lead, into Sports Illustrated, according to chief marketing officer Andres Cardenas.

“Much like with The Players Tribune, our objective is to grow Sports Illustrated and invest in it while building a sustainable model,” said Cardenas. “We plan to focus on quality journalism and rebuild the brand.”

As part of the licensing agreement, Minute Media agreed to pay the owner of Sports Illustrated, Authentic Brands Group, $15 million a year for the right to publish the marquee sports title, as well as the properties SI Kids, SI Swim and FanNation. 

The company plans to resume the print distribution of Sports Illustrated in June with a double issue, following a dispute with its former licensor, The Arena Group, that led it to miss the May issue. It has also migrated Sports Illustrated and SI Swim to new websites, in addition to dropping the digital paywall on Sports Illustrated.

The shifts come amid an ongoing conflict between TAG and ABG, which has complicated the transferral of Sports Illustrated. After 5-Hour Energy founder Manoj Bhargava acquired TAG in December, the company failed to pay the quarterly $3.75 million licensing fee it owed to ABG.

The default led ABG to sell Sports Illustrated’s licensing rights to Minute Media, but TAG has been uncooperative in the hand-over process, ABG alleged in a lawsuit. In April, ABG sued TAG for nearly $50 million.

The dramatics compound what had already been a challenging year for Sports Illustrated. In November, the news outlet Futurism discovered that the publisher had been producing articles under fake bylines powered by artificial intelligence.

These developments have damaged the reputation of Sports Illustration, but the brand equity of the publisher, along with its sizable audience and robust print product, still make it an invaluable asset, according to Prohaska Consulting media analyst Ameet Shah. 

“The complications have likely been a big source of frustration, but they don’t change the core thesis of the deal,” Shah said. “To win people back, they are going to have to do more than a typical publisher would to showcase their commitment to quality.”

How Minute Media is streamlining the portfolio

To accommodate Sports Illustrated and its related properties, Minute Media folded titles from both parties into one another.

The Minute Media franchise The Big Lead, for instance, which chronicles sports media, will be sunset as its staff of four are integrated into Sports Illustrated, according to Cardenas.

At the same time, Minute Media is rebranding FanNation, which it acquired along with Sports Illustrated, into On SI, which will bring the niche fandom closer to the core brand. The new title also helps distinguish On SI from FanSided, a Minute Media property with a lookalike name and similar content offering.

The new Sports Illustrated and SI Swim websites will also enable the properties to make full use of the backend monetization capabilities Minute Media has built out across its portfolio. 

The titles will also be able to take advantage of the video inventory Minute Media gained access to through its $150 million acquisition of STN Video in January.

“The moves enable two lesser-known sites to draft off the good reputation of Sports Illustrated, an established brand that has fallen on some hard times of late,” Shah said. “That means a better chance of getting on media plans and dramatically increasing programmatic volume.”