The jobs of people who produce Sports Illustrated were in limbo on Friday after the company that paid to maintain the iconic brand’s print and digital products told staff that its license was revoked.
In an email to employees Friday morning, the Arena Group, which operates Sports Illustrated and related properties, said that because of the revocation, “we will be laying off staff that work on the SI brand.”
Authentic Brands Group owns the Sports Illustrated brand and has been licensing it to Arena. Authentic later said in a statement it intends to keep Sports Illustrated going. The company is negotiating with Arena and other publishing entities to determine who will do that, according to a person with knowledge of the talks who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorised to speak publicly about them.
Until those negotiations are resolved, it’s unclear which journalists would actually do the work of making Sports Illustrated. It was not clear how many jobs were affected.
Sports Illustrated’s employee union said in a statement that the layoffs initially announced by Arena would be a significant number and possibly all, of the NewsGuild workers represented.