Andy Roddick, at least for a week, becomes the most admired man in tennis. Not for his game, but for the fact that his wife Brooklyn Decker was chosen as the cover girl for the always anticipated Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. Roddick “tweeted” “still kind of flipping out about @brooklynddecker and the SI cover..anyone see the today show this morning? and check out letterman tonight.”
Also inside the pages (or webpages) is Ana Ivanovic who somehow finds a new use for a tennis net. Kudos to Rich at DowntheLineTennis for pointing out that Ana’s shoot was an homage to another former tennis hottie, Anna Kournikova.
Despite all the publicity and acclaim the SI cover brings, the goal, as always, is to sell magazines. The question is with the SI.com site being a guy’s multimedia hottie fantasy come true ala the background videos, thumbnail indexes, and social networking sharing options that ensure Brooklyn, Ana and the other ladies are already plastered on men’s personal websites, will guys still buy the print version? With a recent report that magazine sales in America dropped 9 percent in the last six months of 2009, the answer likely is no.
I mean how can a print version of Ana in “nets” compare with her speaking directly to you in full HD glory?
Adjusting the Net 
I don’t see why they try and use the swimsuit issue to sell magazines anymore. If there are really hot pictures in it, people will just see them on the internet. I think they are better off marketing good content to the people who actually read the magazine.
I agree with your point. But for SI, the swimsuit issue is still one of their “marquee” titles that will pull newsstand sales. But with the SI.com site being so content-rich, it almost defeats the purpose of the print magazine unless it has exclusive pictures.