Over the last seven decades, Sports Illustrated has proudly met the needs of sports enthusiasts on numerous continents by providing high-quality interviews and stories. It developed a solid base of readers and was producing a considerable amount of its income from print ads and print subscriptions. However, technologies advanced, and the turn of the century brought an increased interest in the internet. Consumers gradually began shifting away from print media in favor of digital media. Like many other brands that were dealing with this transition, Sports Illustrated had already developed a website that was intelligently monetized. However, its digital monetization plan was not fully kept in step with the reduction in print ad and subscription revenue.
Ross Levinsohn was offered the Sports Illustrated CEO seat in 2016, and he immediately turned his attention toward resolving this matter. As a seasoned executive leader in both the print and media industries, Levinsohn brought a wealth of experiences and knowledge that he could tap into. Some of his many other executive leadership roles have been with CBS Sportsline, Whisper Advisors, Yahoo!, Fox and Guggenheim Digital Media. While he worked as Chief Executive Officer at Maven Media, Levinsohn was in charge of monitoring and adjusting monetizing strategies for hundreds of media industry companies. One of the many experiences that he later applied at Sports Illustrated was with The Street with Jim Cramer. The Street with Jim Cramer had been an excellent source of financial news and information for its consumers for years, so it is not surprising that its customers had asked the brand to also supply cryptocurrency content. Levinsohn leaped at the opportunity to raise revenue while also meeting this request. He did so by producing the requested content behind a specialized, crypto-specific paywall.
A similar strategy was applied by the Sports Illustrated CEO as he addressed the brand’s key problem. However, the new paywall that he created for Sports Illustrated did not protect a new stream of content. Instead, Levinsohn elevated the value of the content being produced by placing it behind a new, premium-level subscription paywall. The effectiveness of this move was so significant that it has been a source of inspiration for other publishing brands facing the same problem.