Maven bought Sports Illustrated's rights with going-concern doubts — then gutted it

Maven, a Seattle digital media company run by James Heckman and Ross Levinsohn, acquired the rights to publish Sports Illustrated's print and digital editions in June 2019 under a 10-year licensing deal with Authentic Brands Group, for $45 million — and bought Jim Cramer's TheStreet in August for $16.5 million. In October it gutted SI: 40 staffers laid off and an independent-contractor model imposed, with team-specific microsites run by contractors under the SI banner.

Public filings showed the buyer was shaky itself. In an SEC filing covering the quarter ending June 30, 2018, management expressed 'substantial doubt about the Company's ability to continue as a going concern within one year', and its auditor reached the same conclusion on the 2017 accounts. Maven lost more than $8 million in the first half of 2018, borrowed $225,000 from CEO Heckman that July, and raised $112 million in debt and preferred stock between July 2018 and July 2019, plus another $20 million that October.

The contractor terms leaked immediately: starting offers of $30,000 a year for beat writers, bonuses tied to unspecified traffic goals, contractors required to form LLCs, no editorial oversight from the SI newsroom, and suggestions they might sell ads and memberships on their own sites. The NewsGuild of New York called Maven 'clearly unfit to run this magazine'; a union representative said 13 of 31 print editorial employees were laid off, with the copy desk's effective date pushed to December 10 'after realizing they can't actually put out a magazine without them'.

40 Sports Illustrated staffers laid off, 13 of 31 at the unionized print magazine; Maven itself carried a going-concern warning and lost over $8 million in six months.

The buyer's own SEC filings documented going-concern doubt and losses even as it spent $45 million on SI's rights.

The labor model — contractors on $30,000, LLCs, unpaid-college-student suggestions — was confirmed by multiple sources; a BU labor-law professor called it a way to shed legal responsibility.

Immediate, quotable institutional backlash: the NewsGuild called Maven 'clearly unfit to run this magazine'.

Leadership baggage on record: Levinsohn faced settled misconduct suits; Heckman's previous company, Scout Media, went bankrupt in 2016 and drew a shareholder suit.

Buying an iconic brand you cannot afford to staff buys you the backlash too: the cost-cutting model was public within days, and so was the buyer's own balance sheet.

Maven co-founder Bill Sornsin defended the setup as 'a revenue-sharing model for independent journalists' and disputed the college-recruiting reports. Days after the layoffs, Maven quietly reported that president Josh Jacobs had stepped down, with former COO Paul Edmondson taking over. The union promised to keep 'holding TheMaven accountable for its actions'.