Sports Illustrated is an iconic weekly American sports magazine owned by media giant Time Warner. It has over 3 million subscribers and is read by 23 million adults each week, including over 18 million men, 19% of the adult males in the country. It was the first Magazine with circulation over one million to win the National Magazine Award for General Excellence twice.
Its swimsuit issue, which has been published since 1964, is now an annual publishing event that generates its own television shows, videos and calendars.
History
Two other magazines named Sports Illustrated were started in the 1930s and 1940s, but they both quickly failed. In fact, there was no large-base, general Sports magazine with a National following when Time patriarch Henry Luce began considering whether his company should attempt to fill the gap. At the TIME, many believed sports was beneath the attention of serious journalism and didn\\\'t 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.\\\"
After offering $200,000 in an unsuccessful bid to buy the name Sport for the new magazine, they acquired the rights to the name Sports Illustrated instead for just $10,000. The goal of the new Magazine was to be \\\"not a Sports magazine, but the sports magazine.\\\" Launched on August 16, 1954, it was not profitable 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:
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