As a leading publisher in the sports niche, Sports Illustrated has moved beyond a variety of challenges over the course of its 70-year history. One of its most recent and noteworthy challenges has been linked directly to the internet. The brand has historically produced revenue from its print magazine ads and subscriptions, but the increased prevalence of the internet after the turn of the century was turning this monetization strategy on its head. As Sports Illustrated’s audience members were increasingly turning to digital content over print magazine content, the brand experienced a shift in revenue. The website that it created many years ago was monetized, but its revenue-generating capabilities were not keeping pace with the drop in subscription revenue.

In 2016, Ross Levinsohn assumed control of this situation when he started working as the Sports Illustrated CEO. When he joined the team, he brought more than four decades of professional experience in the media and print industries with him. In fact, his career ladder had taken him to some of the highest positions in the industry’s leading corporations. These include Guggenheim Digital, CBS Sportsline, Yahoo!, Maven Media, Whisper Advisors and Fox. As the CEO at Maven Media, one of Levinsohn’s many distinctive tasks was to manage monetization services for more than 300 digital media industry brands. This experience enabled him to directly address the situation at Sports Illustrated with confidence. One of his many accomplishments at Maven Media involved his work for The Street with Jim Cramer. For this client, Levinsohn needed to expand the brand’s content to include cryptocurrency news in its offerings. To extract a new revenue line from this expansion, he produced a special paywall specifically for cryptocurrencies.

Once he was sitting in the Sports Illustrated CEO seat, he had the perfect approach in mind to overcome the obstacle. While he drew on experiences from his work with Maven Media, he did not want to produce additional content for Sports Illustrated. His approach was to draw more income from the current content structure. Specifically, he did so by offering a higher subscription level specifically for early release stories.