Sport (American magazine)
Sport was an American sports magazine. Launched in September 1946[1] by New York–based publisher Macfadden Publications, Sport pioneered the generous use of color photography – it carried eight full-color plates in its first edition.
This article is about the former American sports magazine. For the similarly titled British magazine, see Sport (British magazine).Categories
Monthly
September 1946
August 2000
United States
English
Sport predated the launch of Sports Illustrated by eight years, and was responsible for bringing several editorial innovations to the genre, as well as creating, in 1948, the Sport Magazine Award, given initially to the outstanding player in 11 major sports.[2][3] In 1955 the magazine instituted an award honoring the outstanding player in baseball's World Series (Johnny Podres of the Brooklyn Dodgers was the inaugural winner); it was later expanded to include the pre-eminent post-season performers in the other three major North American team sports. However, Sport differed from Sports Illustrated in that it was a monthly magazine, as opposed to SI's weekly distribution.
Sport was published continually between its launch and August 2000, when its then-owner, British publisher EMAP PLC, made the decision to close the money-losing title. As of 2016, the photo archive of Sport, a collection of 20th-century sports photography in North America, is housed in Canada in Toronto, Ontario and Vancouver, British Columbia at The Sport Gallery.
History[edit]
1946–1960s[edit]
For many of the middle years of the 20th century, the king of sport magazines in North America was not Time Inc.'s Sports Illustrated, but the brainchild of another publishing house, Macfadden Publications, founded by publisher and fitness authority Bernarr Macfadden. Launched in September 1946, Macfadden's Sport magazine broke new ground, as the first mainstream national sports publication, but also in its editorial innovations. In those years, Sport had the market for magazine-style sports journalism virtually to itself and, under founding editor Ernest Heyn, pioneered a brand of behind-the-scenes glimpses of the heroes of the day not previously attempted. The emphasis was not on the games or the teams, but on the elements of human drama that lay beneath. Sport was an icon in the league of LIFE, Look and The Saturday Evening Post.
Many of the magazine's editorial innovations—such as its Sporttalk digest of short items at the front of the magazine, the Sport special long feature at the back and, in particular, the use of full-page colour portraits of the stars of the day—were later borrowed by the new kid on the block, SI, when it made its debut as a weekly in 1954. In fact, Time Inc., tried to purchase the name "Sport", but the company's final offer of $200,000 fell on deaf ears at Macfadden, who would have sold for $50,000 more, so Time Inc. went instead with Sports Illustrated, trademarking a name used by two previous failed sports journals, and which had lapsed into public domain.
The Sport Collection[edit]
Today, the archive of the magazine, comprising tens of thousands photographic images and illustrations, lives on, forming the base of The Sport Collection, which is housed in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, at The Sport Gallery. There is also a second location in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.