Sports Illustrated Teams Up With Fox Sports for Ad Deal
August 24 2016 - 1:32PM
Dow Jones News
By Steven Perlberg
Sports Illustrated and Fox Sports have signed a new multiyear
advertising and editorial agreement that they hope will provide a
more robust competitor in a digital sports media landscape
dominated by ESPN.
Under the arrangement, Sports Illustrated, which is owned by
magazine giant Time Inc., and Fox Sports, owned by 21st Century
Fox, will share "significant" content, according to Rich Battista,
president of Time Inc. Brands.
A breaking news article from Sports Illustrated might also get
posted to Fox Sports' site, for example, while Fox could syndicate
video highlights to Sports Illustrated's properties.
Meanwhile, the ad sales units from Sports Illustrated and Fox
Sports will be able to sell advertising across both entities, and
the two companies will share in the revenue. They declined to
disclose specific financial details.
Combined properties operated by Sports Illustrated and Fox
Sports brought in about 68 million unique visitors in July, which
would make it the second-largest sports publisher behind ESPN,
which brought in about 79 million visitors, according to digital
measurement specialist comScore.
On their own, Fox Sports ranked third in the sports category in
July, while Sports Illustrated came in 10th, according to
comScore.
"Scale really matters in this business," Mr. Battista said.
The deal comes as Fox Sports 1, a network launched as a
competitor to ESPN in 2013, retools its programming to focus more
on personality and argument-driven sports shows. "As we've scaled
back because we don't believe in highlights and news as TV
programming, that's also created a little bit of a hole on the
digital side," said Pete Vlastelica, executive vice president of
digital for Fox Sports.
Adding Sports Illustrated articles written by "journalists with
a capital J" will help address that shortfall, Mr. Vlastelica said.
"Fox Sports' digital editorial strategy has been driven by
shareable social news and short-form social video. We're not
newsbreakers necessarily."
The pair also will work together on editorial projects, and Mr.
Vlastelica said they are kicking around ideas surrounding the
Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition, NFL football and U.S. Open
golf.
Though they will remain separate websites, Sports Illustrated
and Fox Sports will combine their comScore web traffic under a
yet-to-be-named brand, which will be considered a part of Time
Inc.'s overall traffic. Media companies often place their
comScore-measured digital audience with another publication through
this process, known as "traffic assignment."
It's far from clear whether the tie-up will resonate with media
buyers. "They have great content, but it's very difficult to
compete for eyeballs right now in the sports space," said Niki
DeCou, vice president and brand group director at Horizon
Media.
Ms. DeCou said she'll be curious to see if the greater scale
from the deal results in a price drop for video advertising, which
she said is expensive right now at both companies because they have
less inventory to sell than ESPN.
The deal also marks one of the first major moves by Mr.
Battista, who joined Time Inc. last year and was promoted in an
executive shake-up last month. (Earlier in his career, Mr. Battista
worked at Fox.) The Journal reported earlier this month that Time
Inc. was planning to lay off more than 100 people across all areas
of the company. Five people were let go at Sports Illustrated in
recent days, according to a person familiar with the matter.
21st Century Fox and News Corp, parent company of The Wall
Street Journal, share common ownership.
Write to Steven Perlberg at steven.perlberg@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
August 24, 2016 13:17 ET (17:17 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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