Sports Illustrated
American sports magazine
Sports Illustrated (SI) is an American sports magazine first published in August 1954. Founded by Stuart Scheftel, it was the first magazine with a circulation of over one million to win the National Magazine Award for General Excellence twice. It is also known for its annual swimsuit issue, which has been published since 1964, and has spawned other complementary media works and products.
Owned until 2018 by Time Inc., it was sold to Authentic Brands Group (ABG) following the sale of Time Inc. to Meredith Corporation. The Arena Group (formerly theMaven, Inc.) was subsequently awarded a 10-year license to operate the Sports Illustrated–branded editorial operations, while ABG licenses the brand for other non-editorial ventures and products. In January 2024, The Arena Group missed a quarterly licensing payment, leading ABG to terminate the company's license. Arena, in turn, laid off the publication's editorial staff.
In March 2024, ABG licensed the publishing rights to Minute Media in a 10-year deal, jointly announcing that the print and digital editions would be revived by rehiring some of the editorial staff. On May 17, 2024, Sports Illustrated failed to deliver a print copy of the publication for the month to its subscribers for the first time in the magazine's 70-year history, according to the New York Post's Josh Kosman.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Sports Illustrated” as american sports magazine. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as american sports magazine. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q275837. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1954, 1964, 2018 and 2024.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Sports Illustrated”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Sports Illustrated primary sources, Sports Illustrated archive and Sports research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Sports Illustrated”?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Sports Illustrated” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.