Ask AI to identify “sports venue publications” and it instantly provides a list of five, including Athletic Business. None of the other four existed prior to 2002.
Fenton Kelsey Jr. could not have envisioned — in the mid-1950s — such readily accessible applications for a then brand-new concept known as artificial intelligence. A fully functioning internet, for that matter, was still nearly four decades into the future. In fact, Kelsey couldn’t find a single go-to source of guidance in any form to assist him in his quest to erect an indoor ice arena in Madison, Wis.
So, he would eventually build just such a resource from the ground up.
Athletic Purchasing and Facilities debuted in February 1977 with — aptly — a buyer’s guide. The ground-breaking 48-page book was complemented that year by five additional issues covering the administration of collegiate and high school sports. Forty-nine more annual buyer’s guides followed, with the 50th iteration dropping on desktops across North America this past March.
And, so, with this issue — Volume 50 Number 6 — we celebrate the hundreds that came before it and their collective, evolving and ever-expanding contribution to the athletics, fitness and recreation industries under the banner (rebranded in March 1984) of Athletic Business.
1970s In the beginning: a guide
“A Business Publication for Athletic Administrators and Purchasers”— that’s how Athletic Purchasing and Facilities billed its inaugural issue in February 1977. The first of dozens of annual BUYERS GUIDES, its page count (48) would increase nearly tenfold by 2008 (to 468), and its listed price of TWO DOLLARS would top out at TEN. But let’s not get too far out over our skis. The 1970s were winding down and a new force in business-to-business publishing — rooted in one man’s desire to construct and equip an ice arena — was just warming up.
That first directory drew the attention of diverse advertisers — manufacturers of everything from golf clubs to hockey sticks, line stripers to hot dog steamers, racquet stringers to rink refrigeration systems, isokinetic exercise machines to archery equipment. Fundraising candy commanded a full-color four-page insert in a predominantly black and white debut issue. Some product categories would prove to have staying power with our audience (scoreboards, spectator seating, sports lighting and flooring), some less so (SCUBA diving equipment), but the overarching die had been cast. Four more editions followed that year, with founder Fenton Kelsey Jr. penning the magazine’s first publisher’s letter in April/May, and each issue producing between 10 and 14 articles, often contributed by experts in the field. A multipage “Product Update” section premiered in December.
By the end of the decade, AP&F had filled 1,392 pages with information on — among other topics — liability risk, human resources, money management, the mainstreaming of physically challenged students and practical advice on such things as “How to Convert Your Track to Metric.” Regular feature sections called “Management Concepts,” “Pertinent” (a news digest) and “Useful Ideas” (that is, “examples of what some high schools and colleges have done to improve or expand their facilities on limited budgets”) emerged, as did house ads touting AP&F’s product locater service (by landline phone, of course).
The dynamics driving some of amateur sports’ major governing bodies — the NCAA, the NAIA and the soon-to-be-defunct AIAW (Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women) — made cover stories in three successive months in 1979. An unrelated piece running in August of that year and co-authored by a University of California San Diego outdoor recreation administrator outlined “The Basics of a Cross-Country Ski Rental Program.” An article the following month announced the incorporation of an underpad to the synthetic turf surface at Chicago’s Soldier Field — notable in that synthetic turf, underpads and Soldier Field, which converted to natural grass in 1988, all remain hot topics to this day.
Foreshadowing could be found elsewhere, as well. The decade’s final issue featured the headline “Here’s What Four Penn State Engineers Report on Racquetball Liveliness (the balls, not the sport).”
1980s Decade of firsts
AB’s first full decade of existence opened with its first calendar year featuring 12 monthly issues. Subscribers who signed up in January would see 10,916 pages delivered to their desks by December 1989.
It was a decade full of firsts. The August 1981 issue presented our first annual Facilities of Merit. The June 1988 issue announced the First Annual Showcase on Architecture (what would become the Architectural Showcase that now forms the field from which Facilities of Merit are selected each year). The First Ever AP&F Facilities/Equipment Conference — held Dec. 5-7, 1982, in Chicago — was announced in April of that year. By the May 1989 issue, the Orlando-based ninth-annual Athletic Business Conference would command its own 44-page preview insert.
Catch the name change? Backtrack five years to the 1984 Buyer’s Guide, which teased a company-wide rebranding with a new name that reflects “the true scope of the magazine’s contents,” and the Athletic Business banner was unfurled for the first time on the March cover above the words Facilities, Operation, Administration, Purchasing. September 1985 introduced the first full-bleed, full-color cover photo, and June 1987 unveiled the first cover featuring an artist’s illustration.
A total of three Kelsey family members appeared on the magazine’s masthead for the first time in August 1981, though AB founder Fenton would last be listed in June 1987. Peter Brown and Gretchen Kelsey Brown first appeared as co-publishers in September 1988.
The decade’s editorial and advertising momentum was evidenced by the fact that Athletic Business magazine averaged more than 100 pages per issue in 1986 (another first), as well as in ’87, ’88 and ’89. The digital business age had arrived, with six separate articles (including a three-part series) addressing computer selection and utility.
Our April 1980 Special Report declared racquetball “The Sport of the ’80s” based on 283% participation growth over a three-year period, but by November of that year an AB article pondered whether badminton might emerge as the next “boom” sport. (An April 1984 article admitted badminton wasn’t a “boom” sport yet.) Our July 1983 cover asked, “Has The ‘Fitness Boom’ Gone Bust?” before the April 1985 cover heralded “The Campus Recreation Boom.”
More than one advertiser could boast “official supplier” status for the miraculous 1980 Olympic Winter Games in Lake Placid, while our December issue that year was looking ahead to summer 1984, with Olympic organizer Peter Ueberroth promising “less commercialism” in Los Angeles. Other coverage included school-public partnerships, drugs in sports, sports medicine, youth sports injuries, catastrophic injuries, fan injury liability, money in sports, the selling of women’s sports, Title IX, fundraising, designing facilities for “the handicapped,” outdoor recreation, employee fitness, hospital fitness and police fitness standards. AB’s ever-increasing credibility could be seen in the December 1984 issue, which featured an interview with legendary former UCLA basketball coach John Wooden and an article on college football’s television future authored by Michigan athletics director and sports marketing pioneer Don Canham.
Additional advertisers included companies selling grass seeds, fibrous reinforcement mats for grass fields and the first synthetic turf (out of Sweden) purporting to more closely mimic natural grass. Sweden also exported (for a limited time) the energy drink Pripps Pluss, which in a March 1981 AB ad said, “Good-Bye, Gatorade!” — three pages ahead of an ad for Gatorade. (The latter company would ultimately have the last laugh.) Speaking of smiles, the Coca-Cola Co. and its Coke and Hi-C products rounded out our roster of frequent beverage advertisers. Other recurring product categories included table tennis, exercise equipment for strengthening the neck and the initial wave of breakaway basketball rims. The Lifecycle, Lifegym and Liferower line of fitness products would ultimately comprise the Life Fitness brand and land repeatedly on the back cover of AB by the end of the decade.
1990s Ahead of the curve
Perhaps few images could capture an era better than the November 1990 Athletic Business cover photo depicting a glass block wall surrounding a sign that reads “Aerobics” in teal neon.
But as that particular industry nomenclature faded in favor of “group exercise,” AB proved to be ahead of the curve on multiple fronts throughout the new decade. Focus on the computer revolution transitioned from hardware to software (remember the floppy disc?), with software applications headlining AB features nine times in the 1990s, including two separate two-part series. Another potential industry shift appeared in a two-article, point-counterpoint approach to “Racquetball Courts: Keep or Convert?” An article three months later — “No Referees, No Games” — captured the growing nationwide officiating crisis that has only intensified since, and the December 1991 issue teased what would represent another enduring issue for high school sports, “No Pay, No Play?”
AB’s regular look at the NCAA’s annual convention found an association “bent on reform.” We provided a compass for sports complexes (both building and programming them), as well as success stories on family aquatic centers. (How does actual revenue that exceeds projected revenue by 120% — as was the case in Sun Prairie, Wis. — sound?) In addition, we opened the door to family locker rooms for the first time.
The concept of wellness, initially mentioned in the December 1982 issue of AB, drew more widespread attention during the succeeding decade with three features, including the March 1997 cover story. Other go-to topics: the older-adult fitness market, military fitness, the Americans with Disabilities Act, climbing walls, concessions, playground safety, ice and inline facilities, a breakdown of natural grass and synthetic turf application in Division I-A football stadiums (from majority turf in 1993 to grass by 1999), and a quintessentially ’90s phenomenon: the skatepark.
In fact, for every article that proved a one-off (jorkyball, anyone?), there appeared several whose subject matter remains on our radar to this day: crumb rubber as a topdressing material, the entertainment capabilities of scoreboards, glare control in sports lighting, and boys competing in girls’ sports, which were just beginning to welcome wrestling. A January 1995 article quoted an accounting professor who said the numbers add up for a college football playoff. A March 1996 piece pointed to the surging popularity of women’s college basketball (and predated Caitlin Clark’s birth by six years). A September 1997 overview of the NCAA’s Prop 62 outlined how athletes could earn the difference between the amount of their scholarships and the cost of attending their institution “between $1,000 and $5,000 per athlete, with the typical amount being around $2,000.” Quaint, right?
By now the magazine’s repeat advertisers had settled into a consistent mix of manufacturers offering fitness equipment, sport-specific and aquatics components, scoreboards and surfacing. Some emerging brands would prove to have legs (Fieldturf, Hammer Strength), others not so much (Reebok Skywalker, we barely knew ye). Notable category outliers in the 1990s included restroom wall apparatuses designed to assist in the changing of toddlers or to keep one strapped in while mom or dad used the toilet, a brand of diaper for little swimmers, Lycra Power Shorts for adults (two-page spread), and a tooth preservation kit in the event one should get knocked out.
Our own milestones took the form of a redesign in September 1993 that introduced the linear (non-stacked) Athletic Business cover banner in the font still used today, our arrival online in October 1995 ([email protected]), the introduction of recurring industry literature (1995) and website (1997) guides, and the passing, announced in September 1998, of AB founder Fenton Kelsey Jr.
2000s Boom times
The 2000s — the vast majorityanyway — were boom times in the athletics, fitness and recreation realms. Look no further than the Athletic Business Architectural Showcase, which averaged 95 projects per year from 2000 through 2009. As the industries grew at a pace few could get their heads around (we tried in our own unique way with a July 2001 State of the Industry issue), AB emerged as both intrepid beat reporter and mutual beneficiary like never before.
The decade saw our regularly recurring departments of sports law, college sports, high school sports, recreation and for-profit clubs expand to include semiregular looks at the military, nonprofits, liability and sports medicine. Combined with longform features and new, shorter reader-interest and product-focused pieces, the AB of the aughts produced an unprecedented 18,148 total pages, a per-issue average of 151.
In the middle of this heady period, the magazine unveiled in January 2006 its most significant redesign in decades — the result of six months of internal brainstorming and outside consultation — giving AB a bold, clean and consistent look to complement the brand’s award-winning journalism.
What drew our writers’ focus? Leadership, partnerships and the other kind of ships (Navy fitness). We opened the new century with input from 17 industry leaders, then profiled successful professionals in a July 2006 special feature section on leadership. In separate articles, AB columnists examined partnerships popping up between colleges and high schools and their local hospitals, and a guest author advised how to approach joint-venture partnerships.
A 2001 feature covered college athletics departments’ increasing investment in NCAA compliance, but note the tone of subsequent headlines: “The NCAA has spent 25 years trying to keep its hold over college sports,” “The NCAA retains the right to prevent student-athletes from following its money-making lead,” and “Nebraska law allowing athlete stipends fails to catch on with the NCAA — for now.”
Our traditional facilities focus transcended the care of wood courts and outdoor tracks (topics we covered, of course) to include such nuts-and-bolts building basics as concrete and plumbing (which garnered separate feature-length articles) and the injury-inspired obsolescence of wired glass.
In fact, safety and security was of paramount importance throughout the decade. AB tackled antiterrorism measures, hazing prevention, drowning and lightning detection, performance standards of baseball bats and wall padding, and the all-too-slow-but-steady adaptation of automated external defibrillators. But we never lost sight of fun and games, either, with articles on the merits of both adult kickball and adult dodgeball.
Other topics receiving repeated looks included alcohol management (from concessions volunteer training to college athlete binging), ticketing (from pricing at the college and high school levels to navigating the online resale market), naming opportunities (both collegiate and prep), team travel (collegiate and prep), fan behavior (from obnoxious outbursts in the stands to confrontations with referees to full-scale riots in the streets), internet fallout (in the form of fan forums and compromising photographs), accommodating individuals with disabilities (in recreation centers and programming), matters of individual privacy (in locker room design, as well as drug and even pregnancy testing) and the greening of operations (from facility management to turf care, then our entire July 2009 issue).
AB published a December 2005 cover story called “Swimsuit Issues” (about competitive suit technology), but never a swimsuit issue, per se. That said, women were all over the pages of our magazine in the 2000s. Women’s professional basketball and soccer commanded separate cover stories, women’s-only health clubs proliferated, Olympic women’s wrestling debuted, and colleges padded their women’s rosters in the interest of Title IX compliance (170 rowers on one team?). Moreover, the April 2006 cover story looked at the often-misogynistic marketing of women’s sports.
We also went where AB had never gone before — namely, church recreation and correctional recreation. We talked about a college dance team sparking debate over what constitutes inappropriate in-game entertainment, then six months later examined how the fitness industry had embraced exotic dancing instruction. If you didn’t know about the high school activity of cup stacking before, you did after reading our April 2005 issue.
Meanwhile, increasingly familiar advertisers during this era sold products underfoot (synthetic turf sublayers), overhead (enormous air-circulating fans) and in between (climbing walls and painless chin-up rigs).
Two quotes, in particular, enjoyed a fairly short shelf life — knowing what we know today compared to, in these cases, 2001 — “The average budget in Division I-A is $21 million, but to be in the Sears Cup Top 25, you’ve got to have a budget of about $36 million,” and “We’re doing today with two 15,000-watt lights what 25 years ago would have taken us three 15,000-watt lights to do.”
We had come a long way, to be sure, but more progress — and challenge — lie ahead.
2010s Compelling developments
As the athletics, recreation and fitness industries go, so goes Athletic Business. There’s no escaping the reality we all faced as a new decade arrived and the lag of a late-2008 economic downturn caught up to us. But like professionals in the field, we forged ahead, and by the end of the 2010s, we had produced 11,296 new pages, new looks and a few new faces — including current executive editor Andy Berg.
At times, our coverage reflected the times — from a January 2011 article on the unfortunate challenge to recreation agencies of tent cities popping up on public parkland to our cover story a month later examining the impact of recessionary times on the planning, design and sale of premium seating. In February 2012, the case study of Michigan’s Adrian College made our cover on the strength of investments in sports and recreation facilities that had doubled the school’s enrollment. By August of that year, the cover belonged to “Billion-Dollar Babies: How Stadiums Surpassed a Gaudy New Threshold,” which remains among the most-read articles in AB history, as it marked the dawn of a new era in largesse among the pro sports ownership elite.
Among the decade’s other compelling stadium developments: LED lighting technology’s influence on energy efficiency and the fan experience (think special effects), and spectator sections designed specifically for fans wishing to stand. Teams also began to market all-you-can-eat stadium sections — to the type of fan who usually prefers to sit.
The campus recreation center likewise saw significant changes. These including wider acceptance of biometric access and the introduction of synthetic turf as an indoor fitness training surface. Functional fitness had muscled its way into the strength space, and climbing walls continued to evolve from rock-like atrium attractions in rec center lobbies to gym spaces dedicated to serious skills development. We witnessed the transformation of walking/jogging tracks from tight-cornered circuits above basketball courts to winding paths that showcase all corners of a facility’s interior while dipping down and ramping up, and perhaps even ducking outdoors.
Speaking of outdoors, a trend from the ’10s that endures to this day is the staging of ice hockey in open-air venues (our May 2010 cover story), often within stadiums capable of setting attendance records in the sport and always with advanced ice-making care regardless of ambient conditions. Another innovation and another AB cover (October 2012): the free-standing, fast and affordable (used) Olympic trials pool that can be transported from an event arena to any municipality willing to pay for it.
Digital technology spread to high school video boards and stadium concourse signage, tablets replaced the clipboards of rec department employees, and personal devices posed privacy issues in locker rooms.
AB covered new synthetic turf technology designed to address surface heat retention, then defended the longstanding use of crumb rubber infill against suspicions it causes cancer (our April 2016 cover). Never ones to ignore controversial topics, we covered a massive product recall that rocked the climbing industry (it ascended again) and the fabric structure industry’s public-relations approach following the Dallas Cowboys’ practice facility collapse of 2009.
We looked at potential health risks to high school athletes posed by excessive energy drink consumption and chronicled the college-level lobbying efforts of registered sports dietitians that led to the NCAA loosening its feeding restrictions. Meanwhile, as fans were enjoying limitless hot dogs, we shared the stomach-turning realities found in public health reports on stadium concessions operations.
Branding proved so popular we eagerly revisited the subject. Same goes for sustainability. AB covered the growing concern over concussions repeatedly (including as our September 2012 cover story), the nation’s obesity epidemic more than once during the decade, the ADA twice in one issue, and returned to update hot topics from our past that refused to cool off: campus alcohol service (this time to actually curb fan misbehavior), pregame prayer, stadium escalator safety and overall stadium security (now to include the controversial use of stun guns).
Two of our follow-up pieces proved particularly heartening — the announcement by the University of Notre Dame that it would no longer send football practice videographers skyward in hydraulic lifts and the move by the Texas Rangers to improve railing safety at The Ballpark at Arlington (before replacing the stadium entirely) — both in the wake of fatalities AB had already thoroughly questioned.
Some subject matter caught our attention in the 2010s and still holds it: pickleball, operable pool enclosures, all-synthetic baseball diamonds, and a motivation by high school administrators (in June 2010) to make policy decisions on transgender student-athletes “in the interest of inclusion.”
Fitness platforms emerged as a prominent advertising category this decade. We learned about Zumba, then Aquatic Zumba, then ZumbAtomic (for kids).
The 2010s also brought significant changes to AB. In September 2012, we introduced to the magazine content from ourincreasingly robust online presence and untethered articles with a market-specific focus (college, high school, recreation, etc.) to deemphasize compartmentalization in our coverage. January 2015 brought the first annual Aquatic Design Portfolio, a popular midwinter escape to this day, and a more-efficient print schedule of nine issues per year — freeing editors to produce our daily e-newsletter, AB Today, while still clearing the high bar set by the magazine’s rich history in print.
2020s Stronger together
Recovery. If we had to nominate one word to capture this decade in progress, “recovery” would be a strong candidate. Shortly after 2020 arrived, a novel virus reached our shores, entire industries were impacted — if not incapacitated — and no business (including Athletic Business) was immune from the ill effects.
Athletics, fitness and recreation — while hit as hard by social distancing practices and outright shutdowns as any other segments of society — also were, by their very nature, uniquely positioned to take the pandemic’s punch and help the nation at large get back up again.
In fact, “recovery” appeared on page 10 of our January/February 2020 issue — the post-workout, pre-pandemic kind. The term COVID-19 would not officially become part of our coverage until May of that year (with our annual Buyer’s Guide in between), but its spread was quick and significant. That issue quoted a grounds maintenance professional as stating, “We’re really all hands on deck with mowing, because we don’t want to be in a situation where in 30 days, when our stay-at-home orders are lifted, we have foot-tall grass that we’d have a really difficult time dealing with.”
We, too, naively envisioned a rapid rebound. Our May “Quiet Fields” cover story was followed two months later (with our annual Architectural Showcase in between) by the optimistic cover headline “Reopening.” That issue examined the athletic trainer’s role in COVID-19 response, social distancing in parks and stadiums (separate articles), the potential impact on field lighting that hasn’t been “on” for months, the importance of policy enforcement in health clubs, a phased approach to college athletes’ return to campus and the legal risks to high schools of reopening prematurely.
While it’s never too soon for sound advice from AB, little did we know then that we would mention the pandemic at least once (and more often multiple times) in every non-Buyer’s Guide issue through May 2022. (Not that it was never mentioned again — it was.) A quote by the representative of a spectator seating manufacturer who appeared in our November/December 2020 cover story proved prophetic: “COVID-19 has led to a new norm of social distancing that will undoubtedly play a major role in how people gather at events in the coming months and years.”
Naturally, and thankfully, the pandemic is not all we’ve had to talk about in the 2020s. Technology in the form of autonomy, augmented reality and artificial intelligence received widespread attention in the pages of AB, including in June 2023, when we tapped seven architects for their direct takes on the influence of AI on their craft. We later talked to architect Dirk Lohan about his latest plan to save Soldier Field, and maybe the Bears, from leaving downtown Chicago (told you this stadium is still a hot topic — see 1970s).
We asked 13 manufacturers about the state-of-the-art in fitness equipment (July/August 2024), then printed a pair of subsequent articles on the enduring importance of cardio.
Pickleball appeared in seven separate articles (including two cover stories), and flag football in three (including twice in April 2026). Esports received repeat coverage: facility design, Title IX implications and even athlete injury risk. Same goes for mental health — from meditation to rage rooms. Overall wellbeing was big. We looked at yoga in the military and at Louisiana State University (yes, with goats). Outdoor fitness, fan experience, drones (defending against and disinfecting with), college conference realignment, athlete compensation (including NIL at both the college and high school levels) and the NCAA’s endangered concept of amateurism all have warranted more than one look during the first years of this decade, and we shared the results of multiple AB college athletics and recreation surveys.
Topics that refuse to go away (and AB refuses to turn away from): hazing, transgender sports participation, alcohol management, fan behavior, AED adoption, and ongoing lifeguard and officiating shortages. New developments demanded interpretation: construction costs in the age of tariffs, fitness club offerings to complement the controversial weight-loss medication craze, and the hardwood flooring market’s opinion on the potential competition posed by LED glass basketball court technology.
And, of course, we devoted space to facility design angles ranging from parks, pools, ice rinks and gyms to laundry operations, locker rooms, and the lighting of outdoor pathways and courts. Our Legal Action column, among the most popular destinations in the pages of AB, covered pressing issues of the day, as well as 14 separate case studies that led to a combined $120,687,073.64 in damages this decade alone. The number of projects featured in our annual Aquatic Design Portfolio has increased every year but one since 2020 — from 25 that year to 44 this past January.
Recovery — the kind that allows the human body to rebuild after the stress of voluntary activity — returned to our coverage this year and last, further displacing our collective memory of the COVID-19 kind. We emerged from the dark days of the early part of this decade and regained our strength, delivering 100 pages per issue on average to AB readers and advertisers in the six plus years of the 2020s so far.
We did it together — just as we have for 50 years.
Looking to 2027 and Beyond
Fifty years is a long time. The timeline on the preceding pages tells that story well — the people, the issues, the industry moments that shaped this magazine and the professionals who rely on it. But anniversaries, if they’re worth anything, are less about celebration than about reckoning. You take stock. You ask whether what you’ve built still fits the world you’re building it for.
For us, the answer is yes, but there’s always room for improvement, change and ultimately, evolution.
Athletic Business has always been, at its core, a resource. A place where facility managers, athletics directors, recreation professionals and architects could find the information they need to do their jobs better. Design showcases, programming strategies, purchasing guidance, administrative advice have all been a part of what AB offers. That identity hasn’t changed, and it won’t. The professionals who rely on us for that content will keep finding it here.
What is forever changing is the scope of what we offer.
The industries we cover are more complicated than they’ve ever been. The athletics director managing a Division I program today isn’t just worrying about turf and training tables, rather they’re navigating NIL contracts, mounting program debt, student fee increases that are drawing public scrutiny, and a conference landscape that looks nothing like it did five years ago. The high school activities director isn’t just scheduling games, they’re fielding questions about transgender athlete eligibility, officiating shortages and how to keep fans from making headlines for the wrong reasons. The rec professional isn’t just programming fitness classes, they’re being asked to address the mental health needs of the community members who walk through their doors. The fitness club owner isn’t just trying to attract new members, they’re implementing new technologies and trying to discern how the impact of GLP-1s fits into their business model.
These are not fringe issues. They are the central challenges of the moment, and they deserve serious consideration and coverage. They’re the issues that don’t just require description of the problem but actionable solutions. We will continue to bring in the experts that can offer an in-depth understanding of today’s challenges, as well as a way forward.
While AB will always be a facilities publication at heart, we continue to find that an increasingly interconnected world means no building, nor those who operate and occupy it, exists in a bubble. A piece we ran in the April 2025 issue on construction risks in times of economic volatility drew considerable reader feedback, as did a feature on unruly fan behavior — a reality at every level of sport. That story hit a nerve with readers who have been grappling with the issue and, in many cases, feeling like the rest of the media world has moved on. Our readers haven’t and neither have we.
These responses, which we keep tabs on, tell us something. Our readers don’t simply want a magazine. They want a partner, a publication that meets them in the real world, which right now is complicated, confusing and not always neatly categorized.
So, we’ll continue to bring you more features that tackle the hard questions. More webinars that deepen the discourse around today’s hottest topics. More expert-driven analysis of the trends reshaping our industries. And the pages of this publication, as well as the sometimes contentious discourse among readers on our website, will remain safe spaces for those conversations that need to be had.
In the spirit of five decades of service to our readers, we offer you our most extensive State of the Industry survey ever. Spanning all seven of our core verticals — college rec, community rec, high school athletics, college athletics, aquatics, fitness and architecture — it allows a panoramic look at where the people who read this magazine actually stand as we begin our next 50 years.
As we move forward, we’ll continue the work we’ve always done, but we also remain committed to identifying and addressing the challenges our readers face before those challenges get ahead of them. The product coverage, the design portfolios, the operational resources — those remain. We’re not reinventing the magazine, we’re just reaffirming our commitment to remaining a reliable oasis of sanity and relevant information amid the often chaotic storm of the athletics, fitness and recreation industries.
After a half-century, we know our readers, and we know that what they’ve always needed from us isn’t only information. It’s clarity. We intend to keep providing it.
