Smart Content

Veritone will serve as Sports Illustrated’s official video technology and licensing partner.

Since 1954, Sports Illustrated has amassed a tremendous amount of video content, including interviews and internal documentary footage of famous athletes, sports personalities, celebrities, political leaders and swimsuit models. Through the partnership, Veritone will leverage its AI technology and expertise to monetize the Sports Illustrated video archive, which contains 1.6 petabytes of data.

“Sports Illustrated is home to decades of iconic sports and entertainment footage. In our efforts to catalogue and curate our massive media archive, we sought a partner with deep expertise in both AI technology and content licensing,” said Michael Sherman, vice president, Media at ABG, owner of the Sports Illustrated brand. “Veritone also has a deep knowledge of the sports media landscape making it the perfect partner for Sports Illustrated as we reach into the archives and aim to expand the brand even further internationally, with a strategic focus on Europe.”

“We’re thrilled to partner with Sports Illustrated and ABG to discover, manage and license nearly seven decades of content that has inspired millions—all while bringing us together to create amazing memories,” said Ryan Steelberg, president of Veritone. “Our deep expertise in AI and licensing, combined with our years of experience in the sports media field, position Veritone as the perfect partner to serve as Sports Illustrated’s official video technology and licensing partner.”

Adding Sports Illustrated’s premium video content to Veritone’s proprietary licensing portal, Veritone Commerce, enables Veritone to monetize, and make accessible to users of Veritone Commerce, Sports Illustrated’s impressive video catalogue among Veritone’s other premier content partners, including the NCAA®, CBS Sports, the United States Tennis Association and many more.

To automate, curate and activate its extensive video archive, Sports Illustrated will lean on Veritone Digital Media Hub, a cloud-native, AI-enabled management portal specifically designed for content owners to immediately access, search, manage, share and monetize media assets. Using aiWARE, Veritone Digital Media Hub will decrypt Sports Illustrated’s content and data, continuing to learn and improve on new and old assets, further enriching the files with metadata for faster and richer search results.

In addition, Sports Illustrated editors will have access to Veritone Digital Media Hub internally to more easily search, browse and identify the exact footage they are looking for, and leverage it on both SI.com and social media to offer even more compelling content to Sports Illustrated consumers.