Sports Illustrated: История американского спортивного журнала

American sports magazine

Sports Illustrated (SI) is an American sports magazine first published in August 1954. Founded by Stuart Scheftel, it was the first magazine with a circulation of over one million to win the National Magazine Award for General Excellence twice. It is also known for its annual swimsuit issue, which has been published since 1964, and has spawned other complementary media works and products. Owned until 2018 by Time Inc., it was sold to Authentic Brands Group (ABG) following the sale of Time Inc. to Meredith Corporation. The Arena Group (formerly theMaven, Inc.) was subsequently awarded a 10 year license to operate the Sports Illustrated branded editorial operations, while ABG licenses the brand for other non editorial ventures and products. In January 2024, The Arena Group missed a quarterly licensing payment, leading ABG to terminate the company's license. Arena, in turn, laid off the publication's editorial staff. In March 2024, ABG licensed the publishing rights to Minute Media in a 10 year deal, jointly announcing that the print and digital editions would be revived by rehiring some of the editorial staff.

There were two previous magazines named Sports Illustrated before the current magazine was launched on August 9, 1954. In 1936, Stuart Scheftel created Sports Illustrated with a target market of sportsmen. He published the magazine monthly from 1936 to 1942. The magazine focused on golf, tennis, and skiing with articles on the major sports. He then sold the name to Dell Publications, which released Sports Illustrated in 1949 and this version lasted six issues before closing. Dell's version focused on major sports (baseball, basketball, boxing) and competed on magazine racks against Sports and other monthly sports magazines. During the 1940s, these magazines were monthly, which prevented them from cover current events. There was no large base, general, weekly sports magazine with a national following on actual active events. It was then that Time patriarch Henry Luce began considering whether his company should attempt to fill that gap. At the time, many believed sports was beneath the attention of serious journalism and did not think sports news could fill a weekly magazine, especially during the winter. A number of advisers to Luce, including Life magazine's Ernest Havemann, tried to kill the idea, but Luce, who was not a sports fan, decided the time was right. Luce and editors of the planned magazine met in 1954 at Pine Lakes Country Club, the oldest golf course in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The course's pro shop has a plaque mentioning the meetings, and the plaque also states that the first issue was given to the course. It is on display there. Myrtle Beach Area Golf Course Owners Association executive director Tracy Conner credits the magazine with making Myrtle Beach a golf destination. Many at Time Life scoffed at Luce's idea; in his Pulitzer Prize–winning biography, Luce and His Empire, W. A. Swanberg wrote that the company's intellectuals dubbed the proposed magazine "Muscle", "Jockstrap", and "Sweat Socks". Launched on August 9, 1954, it was not profitable (and would not be for 12 years) and not particularly well run at first, but Luce's timing was good. The popularity of spectator sports in the United States was about to explode, and that popularity came to be driven largely by three things: economic prosperity, television, and Sports Illustrated. The early issues of the magazine seemed caught between two opposing views of its audience. Much of the subject matter was directed at upper class activities such as yachting, polo and safaris, but upscale would be advertisers were unconvinced that sports fans were a significant part of their market.

In 1965, offset printing began. This allowed the color pages of the magazine to be printed overnight, not only producing crisper and brighter images, but also finally enabling the editors to merge the best color with the latest news. By 1967, the magazine was printing 200 pages of "fast color" a year; in 1983, SI became the first American full color newsweekly. An intense rivalry developed between photographers, particularly Walter Iooss and Neil Leifer, to get a decisive cover shot that would be on newsstands and in mailboxes only a few days later. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, during Gil Rogin's term as Managing Editor, the feature stories of Frank Deford became the magazine's anchor. "Bonus pieces" on Pete Rozelle, Woody Hayes, Bear Bryant, Howard Cosell and others became some of the most quoted sources about these figures, and Deford established a reputation as one of the best writers of the time.