Editor’s Letter: The 70th Anniversary of SI

From Sports Illustrated's first issue to the Boston Celtics' most recent title, fan passion is at the core of everything in sports.

Jayson Tatum is featured on Sports Illustrated's July 2024 cover. / Jeffery A. Salter/Sports Illustrated

You don’t make it to 70 by blindly following every piece of advice you get, even if it comes from one of the great media visionaries of the 20th century. In early 1954, Henry Luce, the magazine magnate who founded Time, Life and Fortune, addressed a group of editors who had built a prototype for a weekly sports magazine. Luce was no jock, but he had commissioned the start-up because he recognized the increasingly prominent role sports, leisure and fandom were playing in postwar America. 

Luce had just returned from Rome, where he had watched the Harlem Globetrotters play. (Or the “Globemasters,” as he called them.) He didn’t exactly fall in love with the sport. “I am impressed with what you all have done and I’m impressed with the concept of the magazine,” Luce told the group. “But let there be not a word in it about that game basketball.”

Luce was on to something—about the magazine, if not hoops. (What would he say about the $76 billion battle currently being waged for the NBA’s broadcast rights?) SPORTS ILLUSTRATED debuted 70 years ago with the Aug. 16, 1954, issue, and over the next few weeks we’ll be celebrating our anniversary, starting with today’s release of our July issue cover story. (What would Luce say about the $314 million deal Jayson Tatum agreed to a few days after posing for this cover?) 

Jayson Tatum on the cover of the 70th anniversary edition of Sports Illustrated. / Jeffery A. Salter/Sports Illustrated

Time, tastes and technology change, but there’s been one constant as SI has grown: our dedication to telling the best, most meaningful stories in sports. The stories we’ll tell around our anniversary build on themes that cross the decades. First, we raise a glass to Tatum—and he to us—because the NBA title he and the Celtics won in June, the franchise’s 18th, makes them the most successful team of the SI era. (The Montreal Canadiens, with 17 championships since 1954, are second.) Tatum carries on a legacy begun by the likes of Bob Cousy, the Boston great who was the first NBA player to appear on the SI cover, in January 1956. In this cover story by senior writer Chris Mannix, Tatum and Cousy, at 95 the oldest living NBA champion, reflect on their shared pedigree.

At SI we aspire to a similar generation-spanning excellence. The first feature in our first issue was on a race between Roger Bannister and John Landy, then the only two humans to run a sub-four-minute mile. In the July issue and in the coming weeks on SI.com we’ll explore how today’s athletes are pushing the limits of performance. We’ll examine the boom in the WNBA’s popularity—more basketball, Luce—through the story of one of its most established stars. We’ll look at how the growth of the Paralympics has expanded the ranks of elite athletes. And we’ll have a little fun with our own archive, starting with a look at some current stars who got their first taste of fame when they appeared in SI’s Faces in the Crowd. 

SI itself continues to evolve. We tell stories in ways Luce couldn’t fathom, and our digital, video and social audiences have never been greater. Also, as of March of this year we have a new home: Minute Media, a global media company, is now publishing SI across print and digital platforms. We’re thrilled to be part of the Minute Media family—and that the magazine and quality digital storytelling will be core parts of our future. This is our second issue with Minute Media and you can expect future issues on our regular monthly cadence.

Your loyalty to SI has not gone unnoticed. The dedication of our readers is another theme that has held for seven decades. Thanks for being with us as we build toward the next 70 years—and beyond. Who knows how many titles the Celtics will have by then?