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Sports Illustrated history
Sports Illustrated company history timeline
Sports Illustrated, monthly sports magazine that originated in 1954 and was developed by Henry Luce, the creator of Time magazine.
He'd launched it in 1954 against the advice of his most trusted aides, who viewed the very idea of starting a weekly magazine devoted solely to sports as an expensive, misguided, and inherently trivial folly.
16, 1954, SI’s readers knew all about the result of the magazine’s first lead story, that Doctor Roger Bannister had defeated John Landy in the “Mile of the Century” at the Commonwealth Games, in the first race between two sub-four-minute milers.
The first incident occurred shortly after the release of the January 31, 1955 issue, with skier Jill Kinmont on the cover, when Kinmont fell in a ski meet that left her paralyzed below the neck.
The magazine began to fulfill its promise with the installation of Andre Laguerre as managing editor in 1960.
Fishing, which had ranked fourth among all sports in articles per year in the magazine's third year, ranked number 13 by 1963.
Laguerre also pioneered the swimsuit issue in 1964.
In 1965, Leifer also shot what is considered one of the most famous sports photos of all-time, Muhammad Ali standing over a prostrate Sonny Liston with Ali's fist angrily imploring Liston off the canvas, with three faces—mouths agape—seen between Ali's legs.
The Kentucky coach Adolph Rupp let Frank Deford sit in the locker room at halftime, to hear Rupp address the team during Kentucky’s 1966 national championship game against Texas Western.
On this cold night, February 6, 1967, Laguerre was waiting to put the new issue of Sports Illustrated to bed.
By 1970, SI’s legendary, imperious managing editor, Andre Laguerre, had recruited some of America’s best writers to work for him, and had refined SI’s formula, creating a smart, stylish, literate newsmagazine with a strong editorial voice.
The venerable mass weekly Life had died in 1972, five years after Luce himself, and was later revived as an unremarkable and largely inconsequential monthly.
In time, its impact within the world of sports was equally profound. "Sports Illustrated is like Rolex--the Rolex of magazines," said Chris Evert, two decades after being named SI's 1976 Sportswoman of the Year. "After all these years, it still maintains such a high level.
James Michener, in his 1976 book Sports in America, observed that "only The New Yorker, among contemporary magazines, has been as effective in sponsoring good writing with a certain wry touch." But in journalism, as in war, the winners write history.
The debate came to a head with the 1978 issue, when Iooss photographed Tiegs wearing a fishnet swimsuit.
Danica Patrick, in full Danica Sue Patrick, (born March 25, 1982, Beloit, Wisconsin, United States), American race car driver and the first woman to win an IndyCar championship event.
In 1984, Time Inc. had a chance to buy a fledgling cable network called ESPN, then being peddled by Texaco.
The issue went "from moral outrage to hallowed tradition in only one generation," Deford wrote in his 1989 retrospective on the swimsuit issue, "How It All Began."
The 25th anniversary issue in 1989 sold 2.7 million single copies.
When Muhammad Ali flew from Washington, D.C., to Houston four days before declining to enroll in the Army in 1967, SI’s Bud Shrake picked him up at the airport and drove him around the city, witnessing some indelible scenes he later wrote about in the magazine. It was both a critical and commercial colossus. “You’d pick up the magazine then,” said one staffer, “and it’d be thick and 120 pages, and full of ads for cologne, and 19 subscription cards would fall out.” In 1989, Time Inc. entered into one of the disastrous corporate mergers that marked the era.
In 1990 Sports Illustrated became part of Time Warner, which was formed by the merger of Warner Communications and Time Inc.
Looking back, the year 1990 was a watershed—Sports Illustrated became the first large-circulation title to win the National Magazine Award for general excellence in consecutive years.
By 1997, Sports Illustrated stood as perhaps the last magazine in the Time Inc. empire in which Henry Luce might plausibly take pride.
When ESPN The Magazine launched in 1998, it was originally dismissed by many of SI’s editors as not a threat—basically a feature magazine for a younger audience.
Sally Jenkins, who followed in her legendary father’s footsteps (and, in some ways, has surpassed him), left the magazine in 1998 for The Washington Post, where she’s built a career that led to her becoming the first woman inducted into the National Sports Media Association Hall of Fame.
She placed second in the 2000 Formula Ford festival, the best-ever finish for an American in that spawning ground for future professionals.
Patrick returned to the United States in 2002 after being signed to her first United States Indy-car racing contract by former Indy driver Bobby Rahal.
The venture was out of business by 2002.
His 2004 book 'America's Game: The Epic Story of How Pro Football Captured A Nation' was published by Random House, and named by The Washington Post as one of the most distinguished works of non-fiction in 2004.
Although she never won in that series, she finished third in the drivers’ overall ranking in 2004, which led to a chance to qualify for the Indianapolis 500.
In 2005, MacCambridge edited the critically-acclaimed 'ESPN College Football Encyclopedia,' hailed by Sports Illustrated as "the Bible" of the sport.
In her first appearance at Indy, in 2005, Patrick set the fastest lap in practice (229.88 mph [369.956 km/hr]), but she could not duplicate this feat during official qualifying.
Patrick began racing with the Andretti Green Racing (AGR) team in 2007.
On April 20, 2008, in her 50th start in the IRL, Patrick secured the first big win of her career—the Firestone IndyCar 300 race at the Twin Ring Motegi circuit in Motegi, Japan.
In 2009, MacCambridge co-authored 'More Than A Game: The Glorious Present and Uncertain Future of the NFL,' with Brian Billick, the Super Bowl-winning former head coach of the Baltimore Raves.
Beginning in 2010, Patrick raced a partial season in NASCAR’s lower-tier Nationwide Series in addition to continuing to compete in IndyCar racing.
In 2012, MacCambridge wrote 'Lamar Hunt: A Life in Sports,' the official biography of the American sportsman inducted in the pro football, international tennis and national soccer halls of fame.
Patrick won the pole position for the 2013 Daytona 500, becoming the first woman to start a Sprint Cup race from the pole.
In 2016, Chris Willis of NFL Films put it at the top of his list of "The Top 100 Pro Football Books of All Time."
In 2017 she announced that she would be retiring after the following year’s Indy 500.
In 2018 Meredith Corporation gained control of the magazine through its acquisition of Time Inc., and that year Sports Illustrated, which faced declining subscriptions, began publishing its regular edition biweekly.
In 2019 the magazine’s intellectual property was sold to Authentic Brands Group for $110 million.
In 2019, however, the digital company TheMaven acquired the magazine’s publishing rights for at least 10 years.
Sports Illustrated became a monthly publication in 2020, though it continued to release special issues.
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Sports Illustrated competitors
| Company name | Founded date | Revenue | Employee size | Job openings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sporting News | 1886 | $10.0M | 37 | - |
| The Athletic | 2016 | $13.0M | 668 | 23 |
| Atlanta Journal-Constitution | 1883 | $100.0M | 905 | - |
| SB Nation | 2003 | $21.0M | 1,173 | - |
| FOX Sports | 1994 | - | 376 | - |
| BNP Media | 1926 | - | 550 | - |
| Inside Washington Publishers | - | $1.1M | 50 | - |
| People Magazine People.com | 1974 | $3.1B | 450 | - |
| Cedar Fort Publishing & Media | 1986 | $1.6M | 30 | - |
| New York Magazine | 1968 | $78.5M | 200 | - |
Sports Illustrated history FAQs
Zippia gives an in-depth look into the details of Sports Illustrated, including salaries, political affiliations, employee data, and more, in order to inform job seekers about Sports Illustrated. The employee data is based on information from people who have self-reported their past or current employments at Sports Illustrated. The data on this page is also based on data sources collected from public and open data sources on the Internet and other locations, as well as proprietary data we licensed from other companies. Sources of data may include, but are not limited to, the BLS, company filings, estimates based on those filings, H1B filings, and other public and private datasets. While we have made attempts to ensure that the information displayed are correct, Zippia is not responsible for any errors or omissions or for the results obtained from the use of this information. None of the information on this page has been provided or approved by Sports Illustrated. The data presented on this page does not represent the view of Sports Illustrated and its employees or that of Zippia.
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