Sports Illustrated has been the publishing brand that consumers in numerous countries have turned to for their sports news for decades. Throughout most of the last seven decades, this notable brand has pulled its revenue from the magazine’s ads and subscriptions. More recently, however, the brand has also developed a website that has been producing a new line of revenue. As consumer interest in digital content expanded over the last two decades, Sports Illustrated and many other print brands have seen magazine subscriptions drop and website traffic increase. While the sports brand’s website produced revenue from the start, the brand needed to elevate digital revenue further to properly account for the decline in print subscriptions. Creating a strategy to accomplish this goal fell on the shoulders of the Sports Illustrated CEO, Ross Levinsohn.
Before he landed the position of Sports Illustrated CEO, Levinsohn had developed a solid reputation in the media and print industries over the course of his 40-year career. His influence on these prominent industries was on full display through the executive leadership roles he held at key companies. In fact, some people may be familiar with his work as a top exec for companies like Whisper Advisors, Maven Media, Guggenheim Digital Media, Fox and CBS Sportsline. He has been able to extract insights from these and other positions to successfully head up Sports Illustrated. One of the experiences that has been closely related to Sports Illustrated’s situation was through his work for The Street with Jim Cramer. As cryptocurrencies were gaining momentum with consumers, Levinsohn seized the opportunity for this brand to branch out. While it traditionally has been a Wall Street-focused brand, a revamped monetizing strategy was created that involved putting cryptocurrency data and insights behind a fresh paywall.
As the Sports Illustrated CEO, this industry leader decided to produce another paywall to pull more revenue from the brand’s website. Rather than establishing a new stream of content, however, he transitioned existing content behind the new paywall. This paywall backed a premium subscription, and subscribers to it were given early access to the brand’s interviews and news stories.