Sports Illustrated media bias and reliability
The rating organisations do not give Sports Illustrated one shared verdict in the records we hold. Their published ratings are Ad Fontes Media: Centre; Media Bias/Fact Check: Leans left. We have seen it on 5 published stories of ours.
The short answers
Is Sports Illustrated biased?
The rating organisations do not give Sports Illustrated one shared verdict in the records we hold. Their published ratings are Ad Fontes Media: Centre; Media Bias/Fact Check: Leans left. An outlet rating describes a broad pattern in its output, not every article it publishes.
Is Sports Illustrated left or right?
The rating organisations do not give Sports Illustrated one shared verdict in the records we hold. Their published ratings are Ad Fontes Media: Centre; Media Bias/Fact Check: Leans left. In the three-way grouping used on story pages, that puts it under Left.
Is Sports Illustrated reliable?
The factual-reliability assessments we hold for Sports Illustrated are Ad Fontes Media: Mixed factuality; Media Bias/Fact Check: High factuality. These are outlet-level assessments, not a guarantee that every report is correct.
What Sports Illustrated has been covering
Our account of each story, written from every outlet that ran it, with Sports Illustrated’s own report linked underneath.
Filip Hrgovic defeated Moses Itauma in the ninth round to win the vacant IBF heavyweight world title. Itauma suffered his first professional loss, with his corner throwing in the towel as Hrgovic dominated.
Sports Illustrated reported it asMoses Itauma vs Filip Hrgovic Results: Hrgovic Turns the Tables for Stunning Comeback TKO (opens Sports Illustrated in a new tab)
Enes Kanter Freedom was ejected from a WNBA game between the Indiana Fever and Chicago Sky after a confrontation with Sky guard Natasha Cloud. Freedom, who declared himself eligible for the WNBA draft identifying as a woman, was wearing a shirt with a definition of 'woman'.
Sports Illustrated reported it asEnes Kanter Freedom Hits Wall in Absurd WNBA Feud: Full Timeline of Former NBA Player’s Publicity Stunt (opens Sports Illustrated in a new tab)
FIFA confirmed on 17 August 2026 that Chief Operating Officer Kevin Lamour had left the organisation after he criticised President Gianni Infantino's plan to sell a stake in FIFA's tournament business. Lamour called the plan 'the project of one person' and said staff had been 'deceived'.
Sports Illustrated reported it asFIFA Fires Senior Officer After His Public Defiance of Gianni Infantino (opens Sports Illustrated in a new tab)
Naz Reid, traded from the Minnesota Timberwolves to the Charlotte Hornets, said he was informed of the possibility 48 hours before the trade was reported. He was en route to the Bahamas when the deal was confirmed. Outlets diverged on whether to lead with the timing or the location of his revelation.
Sports Illustrated reported it asThis Hornets Front Office is Among NBA's Best With One 'Complicated' Caveat (opens Sports Illustrated in a new tab)
Serbia's football association withdrew support for FIFA President Gianni Infantino's re-election bid, joining European opposition after FIFA's failed $4.2 billion tournament stake sale. The reversal came 70 days after Serbia initially backed Infantino, with the association calling for new leadership to restore trust in global football governance.
Sports Illustrated reported it asBallon d’Or Winning Legend Puts Gianni Infantino on Blast in Withering Rant (opens Sports Illustrated in a new tab)
Who says so
2 organisations have published a rating for this outlet, in their own words. Where they disagree, the disagreement is the useful part and it is left standing.
How reliably it reports fact
A rating of the newsroom in general, by others, and a different thing from the Trust score we publish on each story, which judges one piece of reporting.
High factuality
Who owns it
- Authentic Brands Groupunknowndirect owner
- BlackRockPrivate Equityparent group
- Lion Capital LLPPrivate Equityparent group
- Leonard Green & PartnersPrivate Equityparent group
- General AtlanticPrivate Equityparent group
Where it publishes from
What we have seen ourselves
Counted across the stories this site has published, which is the only denominator a reader can check: every one of them has a page, and every page lists the reports it was written from.
- Stories
- 5
- Reports listed
- 5
- We could read
- 0
- First seen
- 4 August 2026
5 of those reports were paywalled or blocked to us. Our reading of this outlet is built on the 0 we could open, not on everything it published.
On 1 of those stories, outlets rated left were largely absent from the coverage and Sports Illustrated ran the story anyway.
Across the 5 stories of ours where at least three of the reports we listed carried a time, we logged no report earlier than Sports Illustrated’s on 1 of them. Overall it filed a median of 11 hours after the earliest report we logged.
Measured 20 September 2026. Last seen in a coverage list 4 September 2026. Ratings pulled 6 September 2026.
Other outlets rated the same way
Publishers carrying the same published leaning as Sports Illustrated, also publishing from United States, ordered by how often we have seen them on a story. Sharing a rating is not the same as being alike.
Think this page is wrong?
The leanings above are published by AllSides, Ad Fontes Media and Media Bias/Fact Check, and we republish them rather than make them. If you think one is misapplied, the strongest place to say so is with the organisation that made it, and every verdict here links to their page.
What we are responsible for is everything else: the ownership chain, where Sports Illustrated publishes from, which of our stories we have listed it on, and whether we have the right publisher at all. Tell us what is wrong and an editor reads it.
Report something wrong on this page
Anything we correct is written up in the public corrections log. We do not publish reader votes as a rating, because an unattributed rating is the thing this site exists to argue against.
Every rating on this page is a named third party’s published work, republished with its author and, where one exists, a link to it. Our own coverage record is the section we measure ourselves. Neither is a judgement of any individual report: those are scored story by story, and the reasoning is on our methodology page.