Aiden Konold ‘26
Sports Editor
Sports Illustrated, once the pinnacle of sports journalism, is in the process of a years’ long downfall. It was announced in an email to Sports Illustrated employees on Friday, January 19th of this year that, “Some employees will be terminated immediately, and paid in lieu of the applicable notice period under the [the union contract]… Employees with a last working day of today will be contacted by the People team soon. Other employees will be expected to work through the end of the notice period, and will receive additional information shortly.”
Last fall, it was discovered that Sports Illustrated was publishing AI-generated stories on its website. The Sports Illustrated Union said, via a statement on X back in November of 2023, “We demand answers and transparency from Arena group management about what exactly has been published under the SI name. We demand the company commit to adhering to basic journalistic standards, including not publishing computer-written stories by fake people.”
In 2019, Authentic Brands Group bought the rights to Sports Illustrated for $110 million from the Meredith Corporation, which acquired parent company Time Inc. in 2018. The Arena Group has been the publisher of Sports Illustrated since 2019, when it signed onto a 10 year licensing agreement with Authentic. Earlier this year, The Arena Group missed a $3.75 million quarterly payment, leading to a canceled publishing license.
“Even though the publishing license has been revoked we will continue to produce Sports Illustrated until this is resolved,” The Arena Group said in a statement.
It has been proposed that The Arena Group may be able to make a new deal with Authentic. If the two can reach a deal within the next three months, there is the possibility for Sports Illustrated writers to keep their jobs. No matter the result, Sports Illustrated will never be the powerhouse in journalism that it once was.
The magazine will always be remembered for its in-depth profiles, its magnificently written game stories, and most especially, its memorable covers. Ascendant athletes used to be introduced to the world through the cover of Sports Illustrated just as LeBron James was when he was dubbed on the February 18th, 2002 cover, “the Chosen One.”
In April of 2020, the author of that cover story, Grant Wahl, was fired after calling out ownership for pay cuts related to the coronavirus pandemic. Wahl, who passed away in Qatar in 2022 while covering the World Cup, was known as one of the greatest soccer writers in the world, and spent 1996 up until 2020 writing for SI. During his time at SI, Wahl wrote nearly three dozen cover stories before venturing into writing his own newsletter on Substack, podcasting, and producing a documentary series on the U.S.-Mexico soccer rivalry, versatility that is a must in today’s media climate.
Management responded in a memo, saying that Wahl was paid “over $350,000 [in 2019] to infrequently write stories that generated little meaningful viewership or revenue.”
In the digital age, sports journalism is more about the clicks a story receives than about the quality of a story. At Fansided, a sports website, writers get paid per 1,000 clicks. Hot takes are more valuable to media companies than in-depth stories that peel back the layers of sports. Wahl was perhaps the best at using sports as a medium to write about the human condition. He notably used soccer to write about the importance of supporting the LGBTQ community; Wahl even sported a rainbow t-shirt while in Qatar and was detained for doing so for a brief period of time.
The long form journalism that Wahl and so many other SI writers, including Greg Bishop and Pat Forde, who remain with the company, have excelled at, is on the decline. New Yorker magazine, with a readership of well over 1 million contributing to nearly 65 percent of total revenue, is one of the few publications that seems to have survived the digital age. Sports, though, remain different from all other subjects of writing.
The philosophy that so many sports fans have is why read an in-depth story on a game four days ago when you can get instant analysis via X or the ESPN app? Sports Illustrated used to be a weekly publication, and now its issues come out monthly. This change was largely the result of scores already being available for fans well before the issues would arrive at the reader’s doorstep.
This decline of SI has been sad, but inevitable. And this decline in in-depth stories that go far below the surface of the box score has led to far less knowledgeable sports fans. The majority of sports fans no longer care to read carefully curated thoughts on why a particular game went the way it did. Instead, they would rather see the latest hot take or come up with their own half-baked opinions. Unfortunately, we live in an age of lacking curiosity and stubbornness. SI’s failures are just the latest example.
Featured Image Courtesy of Lokowik
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