November 2022 Sports Illustrated Cover: Basketball: New Orleans Pelicans forward Zion Williamson … [+] poses at Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton, FL 9/6/2022 CREDIT: Jeffery A. Salter (Photo by Jeffery A. Salter/Sports Illustrated /Getty Images)
Sports Illustrated is the platinum standard when it comes to the art of storytelling. Readers are fascinated by lengthy pieces and investigative reports that have helped shape sports culture for nearly seven decades. The magazine is highly regarded and seen as a bible for the sport. Rather than the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, Sports Illustrated readers are devoted to the work of world-class journalists, complemented by photography that beautifully captures key moments in time.
While the magazine’s pages educate and inform through thought-provoking commentary, human interest stories, and profiles, the cover serves as the foundation upon which a love affair begins with Sports Illustrated. Readers have enthusiastically collected magazine covers and treated them as if they were trading cards. Every cover of Sports Illustrated is a masterclass in the art of photojournalism, where groundbreaking and indelible images are sewn deep into the fibers of our memory.
Sports Illustrated is published by The Arena Group. The Arena Group, a technology-driven media company, operates more than 240 brands and recently bought golf publisher Morning Read to expand their burgeoning sports media business. Ross Levinsohn, Chief Executive Officer of Sports Illustrated, believes the cover is still important to an athlete, even in the digital age of journalism. “I think it’s history. I think it’s the ultimate stamp of success, approval, recognition,” Levinsohn said.
Levinsohn’s emotional attachment to Sports Illustrated goes well beyond a highly successful business venture. As an adolescent, he was an avid reader whose entrepreneurial spirit would serve him well later in life. Levinsohn tore the covers off the magazines and sent them to the athletes for autographs. Of the hundreds he sent out over a three-year period between the ages of 10 and 12, Levinsohn was successful about 60 times. While some currently live in his garage, about a dozen are framed and hanging in his home.
June 2022 Sports Illustrated Cover: Sports: Title IX Anniversary: Photo Collage of Female Athletes. … [+] Illustration by Gabriela Bury. USA 4/19/2022 CREDIT: Sports Illustrated (Photo by SI Cover/Sports Illustrated/Getty Images)
Sports Illustrated has invested a lot of time and resources in growing its digital brand, which has helped revitalize the magazine. A younger audience is discovering Sports Illustrated through social media platforms such as Tik Tok. However, there is still something to be said about holding the magazine in your hands and admiring the cover. According to Levinsohn, “We put money into the book instead of trying to take money out of the book when we took it over. We bound it perfectly. We added weight to the pages. We just felt this product deserved to be added to.” to touch, to feel and to be premium, because that’s what it is.”
Whether on social media or the newsstand, Levinsohn wants to keep all doors open for people to consume Sports Illustrated with the goal of developing a lifelong relationship with the cover. “The great thing about the cover is that it is non-perishable. Digital files you can download, but the tactile nature of a physical book, that’s what it’s all about,” says Levinsohn.
Steve Cannella, co-editor of Sports Illustrated, is a wealth of knowledge whose dedication to excellence begins with his reverence for the cover. According to Cannella, “The Sports Illustrated cover represents a way to cut through the noise and busy media landscape. It’s a message to stop and not drink from the fire hose for a second and pay attention to this, because it’s important.” Cannella believes that Sports Illustrated is the ultimate management and hallmark of authenticity Given its current status as a monthly magazine, there are huge responsibilities as each of the covers is considered valuable pieces of real estate.
Sports Illustrated experiments and tries to capture the new essence of the cover. Sports Illustrated no longer relies on news to inform readers about the week’s biggest sports stories, taking a forward-thinking approach by focusing on what’s coming up or exploring trends and events. Since season and event previews are synonymous with Sports Illustrated, there is also a greater emphasis on the biggest names, issues, and themes. News-related stories have found a home on SI.com where the digital daily cover resembles what the weekly cover had achieved for decades. The spirit of what a Sports Illustrated cover once stood for is perfectly preserved, while increasing the metabolism from weekly to daily and achieving great success.
Cannella presented an intriguing observation about athletes and how they consume content. There’s a generation of athletes who didn’t grow up reading printed products but are deeply in tune with what it means to have their photo next to a Sports Illustrated logo. According to Cannella, “The cover represents much more than just a piece of paper. It’s an idea, it’s one of our most valuable assets as a piece of social content. I like to think of it as the ultimate meme.”
October 2022 Sports Illustrated Cover: LeBron James poses with his sons, Bronny (L) and Bryce (R) … [+] in St. Vincent-St. Mary high school. Akron, OH 7/1/2022 CREDIT: Jeffrey A. Salter (Photo by Jeffrey A. Salter/Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)
LeBron James is one of the most popular athletes in the world with 52.3 million followers on Twitter and 134 million on Instagram. James has unlimited access to his audience and can share anything he wants in seconds. So why did he choose to appear on the October 2022 Sports Illustrated cover with his two sons, Bronny and Bryce? A veteran of 38 Sports Illustrated covers, James has embraced the power of the magazine and how it cuts through social media with a razor-sharp knife of prestige.
James’ recent Sports Illustrated cover is a proud moment for Cannella. The partnership with James and his family shows how the Sports Illustrated brand has resonated and endures for generations. In addition to appearing on the photo shoot wearing a t-shirt featuring his first Sports Illustrated cover (February 18, 2002), James has a good relationship with the magazine. They have celebrated his tremendous achievements while maintaining journalistic integrity when criticism of James was warranted. He trusted Sports Illustrated to tell his family’s story because he knew it would be treated with authority, respect, and fairness.
Cannella is equally proud of the June 2022 Title IX anniversary cover, where Sports Illustrated connected with generations of female athletes through crowdsourcing and meaningful conversations about what the federal civil rights law has meant to them. He also has a great fondness for the April 2020 cover at the start of the pandemic, heralding a period of great uncertainty with the striking image of empty blue seats in an arena. The covers have been praised for their progressive nature as Cannella seeks new ways to celebrate women’s sports and appeal to the interests of the magazine’s current audience.
Some will argue that the digital age has led to the demise of print journalism. The art of the written word is now required to 280 characters on Twitter or how Instagram and Tik Tok have empowered the masses to be content creators. Thankfully, Sports Illustrated is adapting and thriving in large part thanks to the cover’s dynamic imagery and iconic societal status. As in Ross Levinsohn’s poignant words, “The enduring legacy of an image that evokes some emotion can never be replaced.”
