- Sports Illustrated used to be an enormously powerful magazine.
- Now it looks like it's dead or dying.
Sports Illustrated used to be an American cultural touchstone.
Now it appears to be dead, or very close to dying: Because of a dispute between the company that owns the rights to the Sports Illustrated brand and the company that was actually making Sports Illustrated, the thing you can read, it looks like many of the people who are working there are going to be laid off.
What will actually happen to the publication is unclear: In a statement released Friday afternoon, Authentic Brands Group, which owns the Sports Illustrated brand, confirmed that The Arena Group, which had been publishing Sports Illustrated, no longer has a license to do that. But Authentic Brands promised to "ensure that the brand of Sports Illustrated, which includes its editorial arm, continues to thrive."
This is sad for the remaining people who work at Sports Illustrated. And sad for a certain kind of media person — like me — who remembers when Sports Illustrated was Really Important.
For people who don't remember that era: In a pre-internet world, Sports Illustrated was many things. It was the way lots of people learned about sports, period, since TV only provided a small sampling; a place to read Great Writing (John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, and Don DeLillo, among others, published stuff there); and a place to see nearly naked women, via its enormously popular swimsuit issue. For athletes, being on the cover of Sports Illustrated was a Really Big Deal.
The world is obviously different now. You can get up-to-the-second sports news, analysis, and videos from a million places (much of it for free); Great Writing from Great Men isn't something most people want in their sports diet; and fully naked people doing all kinds of things are just a click away, no matter where you are. There are now generations of athletes who've never seen a Sports Illustrated cover.
In recent years, you were much more likely to read about a scandal or stupid controversy at Sports Illustrated than you were to actually read Sports Illustrated.
All of which explains why Sports Illustrated would be having a difficult time no matter what. Even if its most recent owners were people who seemed to really care about putting out a publication, instead of people who wanted to make money through Sports Illustrated-branded clothing and airport stores.
But it's also a reminder that magazines, in general, are an endangered species.
When I started my journalism career, two of the most important places in the world were Time Inc. and Condé Nast. Time Inc. published Sports Illustrated, Time, and People, among other magazines. And Condé Nast owned the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Vogue, and many other prestigious titles. When Apple CEO Steve Jobs was getting ready to launch the iPad in 2010, he spent a lot of time courting people at those places, trying to get them to make iPad versions of their issues.
Now, Time Inc. has been atomized. Some of its remaining publications were bought by billionaires as apparent vanity plays; a lot of the rest are owned by something called DotDash Meredith, which you would only have heard of if you had a job in or covering digital media.
And Condé Nast is under constant strain. This week, my social feeds were full of obituaries for Pitchfork, the online music publication Conde bought years ago and now looks close to folding.
The reason, of course, is that you're reading this story on the internet — which has blown up both the use case and the business model for magazines.
Magazines used to be places that curated the world of information into something you could hold in your hand, and now that role is filled by the likes of Google, Facebook, and TikTok. And because of that, the advertisers that used to support magazines are moving their money to their digital replacements as well.
So feel free to pour one out for Sports Illustrated — both the idea and the actual place where people worked. But save a bit for some of your other favorite publications. You may need to pour some out for them sooner or later.
January 19, 2024: This story has been updated with a statement from Authentic Brands Group.