The companies billed the deal as a “strategic partnership.”“As a trailblazer and cultural phenomenon, Sports Illustrated has created moments and experiences for its readers that are unmatched by any other sports brand,” Nick Woodhouse, president and chief marketing officer of Authentic Brands, said in a statement. (FanSided, a sports-focused network of websites owned by Meredith, was not part of the deal, and Meredith is “currently in the process of selling” it, the statement said.) “This deal only made sense if we continue to generate premium journalism and storytelling,” Mr. Stone said in a memo to staff. Meredith had acquired Sports Illustrated when it bought Time Inc. for $2.8 billion last year. For decades the titan of sports journalism, Sports Illustrated struggled in recent years to meet the imperatives of the web and deal with the downsides of ink and paper.

Source: New York Times May 28, 2019 03:11 UTC