Bikinis coming via downloads
Swimsuit issue's reported move to digital is latest in a series of cash cow spin off products for Sports Illustrated.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - Sports Illustrated's iconic swimsuit issue is crossing into the new millennium.

Not only will the bikini-clad ladies appear on newsstands Tuesday, they will also be on iTunes, where viewers can download eight specially produced videos for $1.99 each, according to an article Monday in the New York Times.

In addition to the partnership with Apple's online store, the Times said customers can also download content to a cell phone or to a hand-held device through a deal the magazine has made with American Greetings Interactive.

"It is the mother ship of what we do. We want to leverage the power of that franchise," Mark Ford, president and publisher of Sports Illustrated, told the paper. "Sports Illustrated is a multimedia brand. It's a magazine. It's online. It's mobile. It's an event."

Ford told the Times that although 4.8 million swimsuit copies will be sold, more than any Sports Illustrated issue, up to 60 million people will actually see the magazines. If true, that makes it the most widely read magazine edition in the world.

SI's strong suit

In the beginning there was just the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.

It wasn't even a whole issue of the weekly sports magazine. Just a cover photo of model Babette March, and six pages in the Jan. 20, 1964 issue. That was less than the eight pages given to the memoirs of boxing manager Jack "Doc" Kearns.

The swimsuits were meant to help keep SI readers, mostly men, interested between the end of the football season and baseball's spring training, and the basketball and hockey playoffs, in the spring.

But today, the swimsuit issue has become a winter sporting event in its own right, what the magazine refers to as the Super Bowl of print.

In fact advertisers in the swimsuit issue paid $35 million in 2005, or roughly a quarter of what was paid for Super Bowl advertising that year. An estimated one U.S. adult in five will read, or at least look at, the issue.

But beyond the success and reach of the issue, it has also become the foundation of a multi-million dollar cottage industry, reaching well beyond the ordinary paper and ink edition.

Sports Illustrated Publisher Dave Morris said in 2005 that the secondary products together are worth about $10 million in revenue in their own right. And not surprisingly, all are profitable as well.

The other products, the calendars, DVDs, and television shows, have become a way for the magazine to build on its swimsuit franchise without risking over-exposure by putting out more than one issue a year. The $10 million in incremental revenue is more than SI sees in ad revenue for a typical issue. And Morris said there are likely to be more swimsuit-related products in the future.

"There's lots of small and large opportunities. I don't think we've fully tapped it out," said Morris last year. "We are talking to video game companies about sports-content games. So far we haven't talked to video game companies yet about the swimsuit franchise, but I imagine it'll probably come up."

Even some critics who aren't fans of the issue have conceded that the profits and growth show no signs of slowing.

"I don't know when enough is enough, but they'll push it as far as they can push it," said Columbia University journalism professor Sandy Padwe, a former senior editor at SI, in 2005. "When they start to see a downside, they'll pull back, but they'll never stop selling sex."

Padwe said even with the growth of men's magazines in recent years, the SI swimsuit issue is a franchise that no one else has been able to match. As a result there are few true competitive threats.

"They do it so well," he said last year. "Others have tried to replicate it, but they're the masters at it. They nailed it down early and they exploited it in the true sense of the word to the n-th degree."

As successful as the issue is, ad sales represent only about 4 percent of SI's total ad revenue of $726 million in 2004. And of course SI is only a small part of Time Warner (down $0.08 to $18.19, Research), the world's largest media company, which also owns CNNMoney.com, Fortune, Time, CNN, HBO and other media properties.

But the money that comes in for the swimsuit issue and the other products is all extra money that SI would be unlikely to capture without the issue, according to Padwe.

Calendar first spin-off

The grandmother of the spin-off products was the swimsuit calendar, which helped customers keep track of time starting in 1983. That was followed by a video of the making the swimsuit issue, which debuted six year later.

In 1997 Sports Illustrated started devoting a separate edition to swimsuits, putting out two issues during swimsuit week (the NBA mid-season report is the other issue this week).

In 2004 the magazine started selling screen savers for cell phones of the models for $2 each.

2005 saw the reality television show on NBC that concluded with 5.3 million people watching Alicia Hall win the swimsuit model search.

That year, SportsIllustrated.com saw its traffic more than double on the first day that swimsuit photos were posted. And while some of the photos were available to any Web surfer, some were available only to SI or America Online subscribers, helping to add to both subscriber bases.

"What we love is when we can sell people a multi-media package," said Morris last year. He said in order for advertisers to buy spots on the NBC show, they also had to buy pages in the swimsuit issue. The advertisers also got placement of their products during the shows.

In 2005 Sports Illustrated offered a downloadable version of the swimsuit, with photos and ads, including links that let readers get more information about the photo shoots. It sold for the same $5.99 as the newsstand price for the magazine itself.

The magazine had trading cards of the swimsuit models included inside, with nine of the 18 cards available in each issue.

What's due in the future? Morris wouldn't say.

He noted the magazine has yet to explore actually selling swimsuits, though he wouldn't rule out such an arrangement with a retailer.

"Certainly that's something we can think about," he said in 2005. "I don't know if the revenues would add up to be significant. But when I talked to some swimsuit manufacturers, they tell me to have their suit on cover or in issue is huge, that it guarantees a sell-out for that product."

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Is "toy" becoming a dirty word? Manufacturers try for something different -- full story here.

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Most stock quote data provided by BATS. Market indices are shown in real time, except for the DJIA, which is delayed by two minutes. All times are ET. Disclaimer. Morningstar: © 2018 Morningstar, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Factset: FactSet Research Systems Inc. 2018. All rights reserved. Chicago Mercantile Association: Certain market data is the property of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved. Dow Jones: The Dow Jones branded indices are proprietary to and are calculated, distributed and marketed by DJI Opco, a subsidiary of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and have been licensed for use to S&P Opco, LLC and CNN. Standard & Poor's and S&P are registered trademarks of Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC and Dow Jones is a registered trademark of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. All content of the Dow Jones branded indices © S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC 2018 and/or its affiliates.