Go Woke, Go Broke? Sports Illustrated Fires Staff After Featuring Transwoman On Cover

Sports Illustrated's first swimsuit issue cover was published on January 20, 1964 – that’s six decades of providing sports enthusiasts with hot women in bikinis. Over the years, it has become a well-established name in the media world of sports, but has gone downhill financially as it began to publish content geared outside its loyal fanbase of – what I would presume to be – mostly straight and conservative men. 

As we’ve seen with Bud Light’s promotional blunder that resulted in a $15 billion loss, Sports Illustrated has also seen a decline in recent years since embracing more liberal views. 

In 2022, the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit 2022 featured its first plus-sized cover star, Yumi Nu. Dr. Jordan Petersen took to X (formerly Twitter) and wrote, “Sorry. Not beautiful,” followed by the image of Nu and added, "And no amount of authoritarian tolerance is going to change that." That same year, Elon Musk's mom became the oldest cover woman that SI has ever seen. Maye Musk, 74, posed in vibrant bikinis at the beach. 

Kim Petras, a trans German singer and songwriter, was featured on the SI cover in 2023, resulting in backlash. “Sports Illustrated used to be the crown jewel of sports journalism. Even in this digital age, they had the opportunity to continue to make themselves indispensable,” Curtis Houck, the managing editor of the conservative Media Research Center’s Newsbusters, told The Washington Times.

“Instead, corporate liberalism reared its hideous head and destroyed the magazine from the inside like a rapidly spreading cancer,” Houck continued. “The embrace of transgenderism, the eager celebration of woke, political activism, cheapening the value of the written word by outsourcing content to AI, and putting obese and transgender models in the swimsuit issue all made for a concoction of stupidity where SI’s parent company only has itself to blame.”

Why Is Sports Illustrated Failing?

Pinpointing an exact date for when Sports Illustrated's sales started plummeting is a difficult task. It's important to note that SI used to be one of the few sources of athletic reporting, but things have changed. Social media-based content like podcasts and videos rose in popularity, and more people turned to digital platforms for news and entertainment. SI has garnered tons of competitors in the past decade, and it's a tough sell to get men to buy magazines when they have the same access online. Naturally, the traditional print magazine model for sports suffered.

So, contrary to popular belief, I don't actually think that Sports Illustrated failed after "going woke" in recent years; however, the liberal pivot only made it much, much worse for them. Their focus to become more inclusive seemed like it was a last-ditch attempt to attract more customers, and it backfired terribly. Now, their future is uncertain.

Employees of SI received layoff notices via email and Zoom meetings recently. While executives from Arena Group (the publicly traded company that licenses out the SI brand from Authentic Brands Group) assured employees of plans to continue publishing the magazine and website, the details remained unclear. “This is another difficult day in what has been a difficult four years for Sports Illustrated under Arena Group (previously The Maven) stewardship,” the union wrote in a statement on social media. “We are calling on ABG to ensure the continued publication of SI and allow it to serve our audience in the way it has for nearly 70 years."

Mitch Goldich, the unit chair of the SI union and NFL editor, said the union will continue to fight for the publication: "We have fought together as a union to maintain the standard of this storied publication that we love, and to make sure our workers are treated fairly for the value they bring to this company. It is a fight we will continue."

I have a feeling it's too late.

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