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Organization and Basis of Presentation
12 Months Ended
Dec. 31, 2024
Organization, Consolidation and Presentation of Financial Statements [Abstract]  
Organization and Basis of Presentation

1. Organization and Basis of Presentation

 

Organization

 

The Arena Holdings Group, Inc. (“The Arena Group” or the “Company”), was incorporated in Delaware on October 1, 1990. On October 11, 2016, the predecessor entity now known as The Arena Group exchanged its shares with another entity that was incorporated in Delaware on July 22, 2016. On November 4, 2016, these entities consummated a recapitalization. This resulted in The Arena Group becoming the parent entity, and the other Delaware entity becoming the wholly owned subsidiary. On December 19, 2019, the Company’s wholly owned subsidiaries The Arena Platform, Inc. (formerly known as Maven Coalition, Inc.), and HubPages, Inc. (“HubPages”), which was acquired by the Company in a merger during 2018, were merged into another of the Company’s wholly owned subsidiaries, Say Media, Inc. (“Say Media”), which was acquired by the Company in a merger during 2018, with Say Media as the surviving corporation. On January 6, 2020, Say Media changed its name to The Arena Platform, Inc. (“Arena Platform”). As of December 31, 2024, the Company’s wholly owned subsidiaries consist of The Arena Platform, The Arena Media Brands, LLC (“Arena Media”) (formerly known as Maven Media Brands, LLC) formed during 2019 as a wholly owned subsidiary of The Arena Group), TheStreet, Inc. (“TheStreet” acquired by the Company in a merger during 2019), College Spun Media Incorporated (“The Spun” acquired by the Company in a merger during 2021), Athlon Holdings, Inc. (“Parade” acquired by the Company in a merger during 2022), and Athlon Sports Communications, Inc.

 

The Company changed its legal name to The Arena Group Holdings, Inc. from TheMaven, Inc. on February 8, 2022. The Company’s subsidiaries changed their corporate names to The Arena Platform, Inc. from Maven Coalition, Inc. and to The Arena Media Brands, LLC from Maven Media Brands, LLC on February 18, 2022.

 

Unless the context indicates otherwise, The Arena Group, The Arena Platform, TheStreet, The Spun and Parade, are together hereinafter referred to as the “Company.”

 

Business Operations

 

The Company is a media company that leverages technology to build deep content verticals powered by anchor brands and a best-in-class digital media platform (the “Platform”) empowering publishers who impact, inform, educate, and entertain. The Company’s strategy is to focus on key subject matter verticals where audiences are passionate about a topic category (e.g., sports & leisure, lifestyle, and finance) where it can leverage the strength of its core brands to grow its audience and increase monetization both within its core brands as well as for its media publisher partners (each, a “Publisher Partner”). The Company’s focus is on leveraging its Platform and brands in targeted verticals to maximize audience reach, enhance engagement, and optimize monetization of digital publishing assets for the benefit of its users, its advertiser clients, and its greater than 20 owned and operated properties as well as properties it runs on behalf of independent Publisher Partners. The Company owns and operates Athlon Sports, TheStreet, The Spun, Parade, and Men’s Journal and powers more than 150 independent Publisher Partners.

 

Each Publisher Partner joins the Platform by invitation only with the objective of improving the Company’s position in key verticals while optimizing the performance of the Publisher Partner. Publisher Partners incur the costs in content creation on their respective channels and receive a share of the revenue associated with their content. Because of the state-of-the-art technology and large scale of the Platform and the Company’s expertise in search engine optimization, social media, ad monetization and subscription marketing, Publisher Partners continually benefit from the Company’s ongoing technological advances and audience development expertise. While the Publisher Partners benefit from these critical performance improvements, they may also save substantial technology, infrastructure, advertising sales, member marketing and management costs. Additionally, the Company believes the lead brands within its verticals create a halo benefit for all Publisher Partners while each of them adds to the breadth and quality of content. While the Publisher Partners benefit from these critical performance improvements, they may also save substantial technology, infrastructure, advertising sales, member marketing and management costs.

 

 

Of the more than 150 Publisher Partners, a majority of them publish content which aligns with one of our four verticals (sports & leisure, finance, lifestyle and platform), and oversee an online community for their respective sites, leveraging our Platform, monetization operation, distribution channels and data and analytics offerings, and benefiting from our ability to engage the collective audiences within a single network. Generally, Publisher Partners are independently owned, strategic partners who receive a share of revenue from the interaction with their content. Audiences expand and advertising revenue may improve due to the scale we have achieved by combining all Publisher Partners into a single platform and a large and experienced sales organization. They also benefit from our membership marketing and management systems, which we believe will enhance their revenue.

 

Platform

 

The Company developed the Platform, a proprietary online publishing platform that provides its owned and operated media businesses, Publisher Partners (who are third parties producing and publishing content on their own domains), and individual creators contributing content to its owned and operated sites (“Expert Contributors”), the ability to produce and manage editorially focused content through tools and services provided by it. The Company has also developed proprietary advertising technology, techniques and relationships that allow it, its Publisher Partners, and its Expert Contributors to monetize editorially focused online content through various display and video advertisements and tools and services for driving a subscription or membership based business and other monetization services (the “Monetization Solutions” and, together with the Platform, the “Platform Services”). The Company’s Platform offers audiences bespoke content with optimized design and page construction.

 

The Platform comprises state-of-the-art publishing tools, video platforms, social distribution channels, newsletter technology, machine learning content recommendations, notifications, and other technology that deliver a complete set of features to drive a digital media business in an entirely cloud-based suite of services. The Company’s software engineering and product development teams are experienced at delivering these services at scale. The Company continues to develop the Platform software by combining proprietary code with components from the open-source community, plus select commercial services as well as identifying, acquiring, and integrating other platform technologies where it sees unique long-term benefits to it.

 

Seasonality

 

The Company experiences seasonality in its business as a result of typical seasonal spending trends in the advertising industry due to consumer behavior and market activity throughout the year. These seasonal trends are driven by calendar or commercial events that happen annually including holidays, weather, school terms, sports seasons and major sporting events. Seasonality can be viewed between the Company’s fiscal quarters. The first quarter of the calendar year is notably the Company’s most challenging quarter for revenue performance. During this quarter, advertisers are planning their budgets and current year spend and consumer spending declines after the holidays. As a result, Revenue per Page View (“RPM”) is typically lowest during the first quarter. During the second quarter of the calendar year, the Company typically see advertisers starting to spend their budgets more actively, which results in RPMs starting to recover. Summer is traditionally a quiet season, as people spend more time outdoors and less time online resulting in lower revenue in the third quarter. Advertisers usually readjust their budgets during this time and devise new strategies for the remainder of the year. Naturally, the Company sees the highest dip in July, after which RPMs gradually start to increase. The fourth quarter of the calendar year is the Company’s most profitable season. Advertising typically peaks in the fourth quarter as advertisers tend to concentrate their budgets during the holiday season. This trend is magnified by professional sports and college football seasons, which account for a significant portion of the Company’s advertising revenue during that period of the year. Other sporting events such as the Super Bowl, the Winter and Summer Olympics, soccer’s World Cup, and major golf, tennis and cycling events create increased traffic at the time of these respective events.

 

Going Concern

 

The Company’s consolidated financial statements have been prepared assuming that the Company will continue as a going concern, which contemplates the realization of assets and the liquidation of liabilities in the normal course of business. The Company’s consolidated financial statements do not include any adjustments that might be necessary if it is unable to continue as a going concern.

 

 

For the year ended December 31, 2024, the Company incurred a net loss from continuing operations of $7,667, and as of December 31, 2024, had cash on hand of $4,362 and a working capital deficit of $82,022. Management has evaluated the Company’s net loss from continuing operations and working capital deficit to determine if the significance of those conditions or events would limit its ability to meet its obligations when due, including under the Loan Documents and Simplify Loan. In its evaluation, management determined that substantial doubt exists about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern for a one-year period following the financial statement issuance date due to the net loss from continued operations and working capital deficit.

 

The Company’s financial results have improved in recent periods due to headcount and consulting spend reductions. In addition, the Company is planning to continue improving monthly financial performance through the reduction of costs and monthly cash requirements, maintain compliance with the terms of all outstanding debt agreements, and take actions to resolve current and potential future liabilities to alleviate the conditions that raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern, such as resolving pending litigation. However, there can be no assurance that the Company will be able to execute these plans. If the Company is unable to execute these plans, it could lead to selling assets and further reducing costs and cash requirements.