Wherever I went as the editor of Sports Illustrated, the first question was inevitably about the Swimsuit Issue. Not about a favorite player or team or the Super Bowl or scoring tickets or an internship. Sometimes men would just say “Swimsuit” and grin. If they found out part of my job was to pick the cover, things got silly. Otherwise serious men asked what it would take—No, really, what would it take?—to get invited on a shoot.
In 2004, Forbes estimated the issue’s total revenues at $1 billion. My last Swimsuit Issue was published in 2013, with Kate Upton on the cover, and “Swim,” as the staff called it, was on 13 platforms, including print editions out of Beijing, Delhi, and Cape Town. We had a Swimsuit Daily blog, a supercharged tablet edition with panoramic photo sequences, two hours of video, a Chrome Web app, and 3D video for PlayStation 3. There was also an iPhone app that gave users a 360-degree view of body-painted athletes.
