Sports Illustrated owner Maven taps former publisher of New York magazine

New York magazine’s publisher Avi Zimak has been named to a top post at Maven, the tech and publishing company that is overseeing Sports Illustrated.

Zimak, who also served as chief revenue officer of parent company New York Media until its sale to Vox Media was completed, will be the chief revenue and chief strategy officer at Maven.

Aside from owning SI and Jim Cramer’s financial news site The Street, the Maven is the ad platform for about 300 media brands and bloggers including History.com, Oxygen, Maxim and Ski Magazine.

Maven has been embroiled in controversy after it agreed to pay Authentic Brands Group a down payment of $45 million for a license to take over the Sports Illustrated magazines and web sites under a 10-year licensing deal.

ABG had earlier this year purchased SI from Meredith for $110 million. Shortly after taking over operations in October, Maven laid off close to 50 people, including at least a dozen editorial employees.

Prior to New York Media, Zimak was the vice president and general manager of Outbrain and earlier in his career worked at Conde Nast, Hearst and Time Inc.

“I couldn’t be more excited to join this veteran executive and engineering team, in creating a sustainable model to ensure independent, premium journalism not only survives but thrives through the constant challenges technology and consolidation presents,” Zimak said in a statement.

Maven said it is refocusing SI with the aim of building team-specific sites in the digital realm, while it shifts the every other week magazine into regular monthly magazines, special issues around 4 major sports leagues in baseball, football, basketball and hockey plus a half dozen SI for Kids print editions and special one-off issues tied to events such as the Super Bowl.

Ultimately, the company said it will publish at least 27 print versions of SI in all its different formats each year. The company claims its digital push to staff up 200 team specific sites has already resulted in an uptick of 4 million visitors to its web properties in October.

Maven is focused on “premium household media brands combined with modern technology,” said James Heckman, the CEO of Maven, a publicly traded, small-cap company that was up seven cents to 77 cents a share in early trading Monday.

The digital publishing world has seen an acceleration of the consolidation trend among big players trying to find a path to profitability, with Vice Media buying Refinery 29 and Vox Media acquiring New York Media and Univision earlier selling off Gizmodo Media to a private equity backer.

Gizmodo was renamed G/O Media and has been ensnared in controversy as the entire editorial staff of its sports-centric site Deadspin walked off the job in a dispute with management, causing the new postings to stop.