Can you judge a magazine by its covers? First, the ‘modern’ SI magazine had predecessors. But the magazine we know and sometimes love was launched on June 9, 1954.
It lost money for the first 10 years because it took a while for the editors to figure out that ‘elite’ sports (like sailing) did not sell very many magazines. The big factors for Sports Illustrated becoming successful were: 1) Color printing, 2) Changing formats (common sports) 3) TV helping sports reach more people 4) the raising popularity of football, and 5) the swimsuit issue that started in January 1964.
The magazine is read by more than 3 million.
The covers of Sports Illustrated are a topic all by themselves.
The first cover was baseball’s Eddie Mathews. (A good trivia question.) The covers have ‘covered’ just about every sport and sporting topic, i.e. Title IX.
What sport/topic has the most covers? Football leads with 752 (including the Chiefs), then Baseball with 628 (Yes, the Royals), and Basketball 506. Then it drops off quickly: Golf 155, Boxing 134, Hockey 100, Track is close at 99 and Tennis has 78. Soccer is a late bloomer with 28.
The individuals that lead are Michael Jordan 50 (that is no big surprise) and Muhammad Ali with 40. Climbing is Lebron James with 25 and Tiger Woods with 24. It is hard to believe they will catch up with Jordan.
Other Covers: Olympics get some coverage then add, Running, Horse Racing, Surfing, Wrestling, Rodeo, heck even MU football was on the cover in 2007 and ‘08. Occasionally you get oddities like, Evil Knievel, Dog Shows, Bobby Fischer
