The Arena Group (AREN) and its sports-media vertical, Sports Illustrated Media Group, today announced that it is partnering with four properties to grow and expand the publisher’s existing coverage across professional football, college sports, wrestling, and mixed martial arts.
The four media properties will utilize The Arena Group’s robust set of platform capabilities, joining more than 200 brands benefiting from its technology infrastructure, enterprise-wide advertising opportunities, distribution, artificial intelligence capabilities, and more. Further, Sports Illustrated Media Group will add millions of users and advertising impressions to its footprint as a top-five U.S. sports property.
New Properties Joining Sports Illustrated
- AtoZ Sports is a local sports media network rapidly expanding across the NFL with 3 million unique users per month, according to Google Analytics in February. AtoZ provides NFL fans with real-time updates for their favorite teams, providing extensive analysis, reaction, live shows, podcasts, video, and more. The site covers the majority of NFL markets with expansion plans to cover all 32 teams this fall. An example of AtoZSports.com’s in-depth team analysis is its Film Room, which breaks down the All-22 film of NFL Draft prospects and current players.
- College Football News is college sports fans’ one-stop shop for news, rankings, schedules, analysis, mock drafts, best bets, and more across college football and basketball. With a mixture of previews, predictions, and commentary, CollegeFootballNews.com engaged over 1.5 million monthly college sports fans according to Google Analytics during this past football season.
- MMA News provides in-depth, daily news coverage of professional Mixed Martial Arts. For more than 20 years, MMAnews.com has covered fight nights from every angle, including previews, live results, and post-show analysis, and, according to Google Analytics, recorded 1.9 million unique users per month in February.
- SE Scoops has been an industry-leading source for news in the world of professional wrestling since 2004 with 1.5 million unique users per month in February per Google Analytics. In addition to the latest around-the-clock news, SEScoops.com conducts exclusive interviews with professional wrestling’s top stars, along with comprehensive coverage of broadcast television shows, pay-per-view spectaculars, and premium live events.
The Arena Group Continues to Expand Its Reach
“As The Arena Group continues to expand its reach, we are excited to welcome these specialized sports properties to our platform, equipping them with a variety of publishing resources and monetization tools,” said Chris Pirrone, Senior Vice President & General Manager of Sports Illustrated. “These partners will allow us to engage diversified sports fans with the in-depth, knowledgeable analysis and opinion they love, while also providing our advertising partners access to premium content and an expanded audience.”
“We're extremely excited to team up with The Arena Group and be a part of the Sports Illustrated Media Group,” said Zach Bingham, CEO of AtoZSports.com. “We believe this move will take us to new heights as a company to build more sports communities embraced by their passionate fans. The Arena Group gives us the ability to share our original content, which includes articles about players and the latest breaking news, player film breakdown, social media posts, live broadcasts, and more!”
These websites join the same Arena Group publishing platform that powers Sports Illustrated, Sports Illustrated Swimsuit, The Hockey News, Athlon Sports, The Spun, and Fadeaway World. Sports Illustrated Media Group now ranks #4 across Sports Media in the United States, according to Comscore, with close to 80 million monthly unique visitors.
