The Sporting News is a website and former magazine publication owned by Sporting News Holdings, which is a U.S.-based sports media company formed in December 2020 by a private investor consortium. It was originally established in 1886 as a print magazine. It became the dominant American publication coveringbaseball, acquiring the nickname "The Bible of Baseball".[1]
From 2002 to February 2022, it was known simply asSporting News. In December 2012,The Sporting News ended print publication and shifted to a digital-only publication. It currently has editions in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Japan.
March 17, 1886:The Sporting News (TSN), founded in St. Louis[2] byAlfred H. Spink, a director of theSt. Louis Browns baseball team, publishes its first edition. The weekly newspaper sells for 5 cents. Baseball, horse racing and professional wrestling received the most coverage in the first issue. Meanwhile, the sporting weekliesClipper andSporting Life were based in New York and Philadelphia. By World War I,TSN would be the only national baseball newspaper.
1901: The American League, another rival to baseball's National League, begins playing.TSN was a vocal supporter of the new league and its founder,Ban Johnson. Both parties advocated cleaning up the sport, in particular ridding it of liquor sales, gambling and assaults on umpires.
1903:TSN editor Arthur Flanner helps draft the National Agreement, a document that brought a truce between the AL and NL and helped bring about the modernWorld Series.
1904: New York photographerCharles Conlon begins taking portraits of major league players as they pass through the city's three ballparks: the Polo Grounds, Yankee Stadium and Ebbets Field. His images, many of which were featured inTSN, have become treasured symbols of baseball's past.
1936:TSN names its first major leagueSporting News Player of the Year Award,Carl Hubbell of the New York Giants. It is the oldest and most prestigious award given to the single player in MLB who had the most outstanding season. To this day, it remains voted on by MLB players.
1942: After decades of being intertwined with baseball,TSN adds in-season football coverage.
1946:TSN expands its football coverage with an eight-page tabloid publication titledThe Quarterback. The tab is later renamed theAll-Sports News as coverage of other sports is added, including professional and college basketball and hockey.
1962: J. G. Taylor Spink dies. His son C. C. Johnson Spink takes over the publication. In 1962, after Spink's death, theBaseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA) instituted theJ. G. Taylor Spink Award as the highest award given to its members. Spink was also the first recipient.
1967:TSN publishes its first full-color photo, a cover image of Orioles starFrank Robinson.
1991:The Sporting News transitions to a glossy, full-color all-sports magazine.
1996:The Sporting News comes online, serving as a sports content provider for AOL. The following year, it launches sportingnews.com.
2000: Tribune Company sellsTSN to Vulcan Inc., headed by tech billionairePaul Allen. The following year, the company acquired the One on One Sports radio network, renaming itSporting News Radio.
2002: The magazine drops thedefinite article from its name and becomes justSporting News (SN). Subsequent covers reflect the change.
2006: Vulcan sellsSN to Advance Media, which places the publication under the supervision ofAmerican City Business Journals (ACBJ).
2007:Sporting News begins its move from St. Louis, where it had been based since its founding, to ACBJ's headquarters in Charlotte, N.C. The publication leaves St. Louis for good in 2008, when it also became a bi-weekly publication.
In 2011,Sporting News announced a deal to take over editorial control ofAOL's sports websiteFanHouse.[4] In December 2012, after 126 years,Sporting News published its final issue as a print publication, and shifted to becoming a digital-only publication.[5]
The following March, ACBJ contributedSporting News into a joint venture with the U.S. assets of sports data companyPerform Group, known as Perform Sporting News Limited and doing business as Sporting News Media. Perform owned 65% of Sporting News Media.Sporting News would join Perform Group's other domestic properties, such as its video syndication unit ePlayer and its soccer websiteGoal.com.[6] The deal excluded the magazine'sSporting News Yearbooks unit andNASCAR Illustrated.[7] Almost immediately after the venture was established,Sporting News laid off 13 staff writers.[8] Perform Group acquired the remainder of Sporting News Media in 2015.[6]
Under Perform's ownership,Sporting News shifted to a moretabloid-like editorial direction.[6] The site introduced a new logo and website design in 2016.[9] Following Perform's acquisition of ACBJ's remaining stake, it began to align itself more closely with the company's other units, including replacingAssociated Press articles with Perform's own Omnisport wire service for articles and video content (which began to constitute a sizable portion of the site's overall content).[6]Sporting News also began to introduce new localized versions in other markets, with a focus on countries where it had launched its sports streaming serviceDAZN. These sites are, in turn, used to promote the DAZN service.[6] Perform Media president Juan Delgado explained that the company was trying to preserve the heritage of theSporting News brand by still publishing original content, while also publishing content oriented towardssocial media to appeal to younger users.[6]
In September 2018, Perform Group spun out its consumer properties, includingSporting News and DAZN, into a new company known as DAZN Group. The remaining sports data business became Perform Content, and was sold in 2019 toVista Equity Partners and merged withSTATS LLC.[10][11]
In the summer of 2020,Lindenwood University ofSt. Charles, Missouri, acquired the archives collection ofThe Sporting News from ACBJ.[12] The collection was described as consisting of "10,000+ books on baseball, football, hockey, basketball, NCAA, and other sports."[12]
In December 2020, DAZN Group sold Sporting News to a private investment consortium, which became Sporting News Holdings.[13]
From 1968 to 2007, the magazine selected one or more individuals asSportsman of the Year. On four occasions, the award was shared by two recipients. Twice, in 1993 and 2000, the award went to a pair of sportsmen within the same organization. In 1999, the honor was given to a whole team. No winner was chosen in 1987.
In 2008, the award was replaced by two awards: "Pro Athlete of the Year" and "College Athlete of the Year". These in turn were replaced by a singular "Athlete of the Year" award starting in 2011.[14]
TSN sponsors its own annual Team,Player,Pitcher,Rookie,Reliever,Comeback Player,Manager, andExecutive of the Year awards. Many fans once held the newspaper's baseball awards at equal or higher esteem than those of theBaseball Writers' Association of America.[24] Prior to 2005, theSN Comeback Player Award was generally recognized as the principal award of its type, as MLB did not give such an award until that year.
Also, between 1975 and 2005, Sporting News conducted an annual poll and named a national champion for Division I-A (now Division I FBS). It is regarded as a "major selector" in NCAA official records books.[27]
