Maven Investor News 1/21/20 - The SI Digital Cover

A compendium of news from in and around the company for investors, partners and other stakeholders.

SI Debuts Digital Cover

As part of its emerging new look, SI.com introduced its digital cover for Ross Dellenger's take on LSU's historic, 42-25 victory over Clemson in the college football national championship game last Monday night. Click here to read Dellenger's piece and view the full version of the spectacular digital cover.

Sports Illustrated plans to make the digital cover a regular feature, as part of its coming redesign, after Super Bowl LIV.

TheStreet Virality: Bezos Follows One Person on Twitter

This video went viral for TheStreet last week: Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder, has more than 1 million followers on Twitter, but follows only one person. The irony is that person doesn't follow him back. Don’t just guess who this is, view the video here.

Mighty Maven: Mike Fisher

Back in the spring of 1990, Mike Fisher moved to the Dallas-Fort Worth area for a newspaper job covering the Dallas Cowboys. He’d already covered the Denver Broncos and San Francisco 49ers, but, in his words, “I was still a pup.”

For three days, Fisher – “Fish” to most – sat in his car in the parking lot at Cowboys headquarters in Valley Ranch, “waiting for something to happen.” On the third day, a vaguely familiar man approached Fisher’s car. He banged on a window, demanding to know why Fisher had sat in his parking lot for the past three days.

“It was Jerry Jones,” Fisher says. “He cordially invited me into his office ‘for an iced tea.’ And we’ve enjoyed 30 years of ‘iced teas’ since.”

Those kinds of deep connections have made Fisher an authority on Cowboys football, to the point that his coverage on CowboyMaven accounts for an eye-popping 20% of the traffic and 17.3% of the unique users on Sports Illustrated’s online NFL team network. His content gets great distribution on the Maven platform, and amplified on a Twitter account – @fishsports – that has nearly 89,000 followers.

Fisher also is author of two best-selling books on the Dallas Cowboys, "The 'boys are Back: The Return of the Dallas Cowboys," and “Stars and Strife: Inside the Dallas Cowboys' Reemergence as America's Team.”

“I don’t think I’m being immodest to say I have an aptitude for doing good work ... fast,” Fisher says. “But most of all, at CowboysSI.com and DallasBasketball.com, I’m supported by an incredible staff and of course by the best brand in sports media.”

Oh yeah, Fisher is no one-trick pony. Improbably, he also has been the authority on Dallas Mavericks basketball for 20 years. He’s won an Emmy as a Mavs TV analyst on FOX Sports. His success with NBA basketball also is rooted to an inside connection.

In 1995, Fisher was hired by the large talk radio station in Dallas, KLIF, to host a midday sports talk show - “Fish for Lunch.” During the same time, a local “new millionaire” was tinkering with wires and signals at KLIF, in hopes of acquiring the radio signal for basketball games at his alma mater, Indiana University. The two became friends and the guy eventually succeeded in figuring out how to webcast Indiana basketball and other sporting events.

Fisher’s new buddy, Mark Cuban, used his technological trick to help launch a company, Broadcast.com (originally AudioNet), which was sold to Yahoo in 1999 for $5.7 billion and which helped Cuban to – you guessed it – buy the Dallas Mavericks in 2000.

An Outside Take on Maven Strategy for SI

Robert Williams, a contributing editor at Media Post, understood the imperatives of the difficult and bold moves made by Maven at Sports Illustrated. He wrote: "Those cuts were unquestionably painful for employees, but may have been the radical surgery needed to save the patient. Sports Illustrated is an esteemed brand with a long history, but sports coverage has changed dramatically in the digital age." Read Williams' commentary by clicking here.

Williams was reacting to Maven's release about exceeding financial forecasts during Q4, when the dramatic transitions of Sports Illustrated and TheStreet took place. Read the release here.

2020 Channel Launches

Antique Trader
Exploring Our Globe
All Lakers
Inside The Heat

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Maven (noun | ma·ven | ˈmā-vən): A professional, authentic authority, evangelist and recognized community leader for a specific topic, cause or organization.