https://www.nbcnews.com/business/busine ... rcna134760So, the story as I've read it is this:
Time, Inc. sold Sports Illustrated to some company called ABG (Authentic Brands Group or some shit like that), but they actually don't want the magazine, they just want the name, so they license the actual running of the magazine to some outfit called Maven (later called The Arena Group) but they don't know how to run a magazine so they essentially run it into the ground, highlighted by a scandal that exposed multiple articles (as well as the names and "photos" of the "authors" who "created" them) were entirely AI-generated:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/sp ... nd-authors Apparently the Arena Group missed a licensing payment, so ABG (who apparently haven't done jack shit with the name brand as far as I can tell) yanked control away and laid off all staff. Most are playing the funeral march for the venerable publication, and it's hard to think there's a clear path out of this current predicament.
Personally I haven't paid much attention to SI in decades--they started going for clickbait shit before clickbait shit was a thing, so like ESPN around that time as well, I just moved on. Still, growing up they were the pinnacle of sports journalism.