The SPORT Collection

From its first issue in September of 1946, SPORT magazine, which preceded the debut of Sports Illustrated by eight years, featured the work of the greatest writers and photographers of the post-war era. In particular, SPORT's pioneering use of color photography captivated a generation of sports fans, many of whom wallpapered their bedrooms with the full-page photos that were the magazine's signature item.

The greatest photographers…

After SPORT closed its doors in August 2000, the magazine’s assets were acquired by a Canadian company, including the core asset of the SPORT magazine archive. That archive forms the basis of The SPORT Collection, comprising more than 150,000 images – everything from color transparencies and black and white negatives, to vintage photographic prints and news photographs – that cover the world of sports from the 1920s to the 1990s, with the best work concentrated in the '40s, '50s, '60s and '70s. The work of SPORT's esteemed staff photographers, including Martin Blumenthal, George Heyer, and Kevin Fitzgerald, forms much of the archive, but many thousands of images came from such admired SPORT contributors as David Sutton, Marvin Newman, Curt Gunther, Lawrence Schiller, Malcolm Emmons, Bob Peterson, Fred Kaplan, Neil Leifer, and Calvin Campbell.

Focus on superstars…

SPORT’s accredited photographers had direct access to the superstars of the post-war era and, in many cases, produced stunning color photographs the likes of which do not exist anywhere else. In the course of SPORT’s 54-year history, many thousands of these images were printed on its pages. But tens of thousands of one-of-a-kind images never made it to print and, in fact, have never been published anywhere.

Due to SPORT magazine’s particular focus on superstars, the archive includes significant files on dozens of icons across all the major sports. To name just a few: Mickey Mantle, Jackie Robinson, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Sandy Koufax, Johnny Unitas, Gale Sayers, Bart Starr, Paul Hornung, Jim Brown, Joe Namath, Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, Bob Cousy, Oscar Robertson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Gordie Howe, Bobby Orr, Maurice Richard, Bobby Hull, Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray Robinson, George Foreman, Rocky Marciano, Floyd Patterson, Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Sam Snead, Ben Hogan, and Rod Laver.

In a 1999 appraisal of the archive done by one of the leading North American fine art photography appraisal houses, The SPORT Magazine Archive was described as "among the most significant resources for 20th century photographic images of American sports figures in the world."

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