In July 2003, roughly 2,500 people packed into a sweltering gym on the campus of UMass Boston to watch an 18-year-old named LeBron James play in what was then a small NBA Summer League. Tickets cost $15. Nobody left early. That night hinted at something historic, though few could have predicted just how far-reaching James’s influence would become. Fast-forward to 2026, and TIME has placed him at the center of its first-ever TIME100 Sports list, a landmark ranking of the 100 most influential figures in the sports world today.
Why TIME launched a dedicated sports ranking
Sports is no longer just entertainment. It has become one of the last spaces where massive global audiences gather simultaneously, in real time, without algorithm-driven fragmentation pulling them in different directions. That is a rare and powerful thing. The 2026 Olympics, the FIFA World Cup, the Bad Bunny Super Bowl halftime show, and even a UFC fight staged at the White House have all demonstrated, in different ways, how sports now drives cultural conversation at a scale nothing else matches.
TIME has been building toward this moment for years. Over the past decade, 43 athletes appeared on its cover. The magazine named its first Athlete of the Year in 2019. In 2024, the TIME Studios documentary Under Pressure : The U.S. Women’s Women’s World Cup Team earned an Emmy nomination. Launching a full sports-dedicated edition of the TIME100 is the logical next step for a publication that has tracked athletic influence since its earliest issues. The first year of TIME, in fact, featured two athletes on the cover : polo champion Stephen “Laddie” Sanford and boxing legend Jack Dempsey. Golfer Edith Cummings followed shortly after.
The list, edited by Lori Fradkin, Cate Matthews, and Mark Selig, covers athletes, executives, coaches, and power brokers whose reach extends well beyond their sport. Influence here is not measured purely by trophies.
The selection criteria behind the TIME100 sports list
How does a publication actually decide who belongs on a list like this ? The methodology is less mysterious than you might think, but the judgment calls are genuinely hard. TIME editors weigh several overlapping factors when assessing a candidate’s place on the roster :
- Athletic achievement and sustained excellence at the highest competitive level
- Cultural and political impact beyond the field, court, or arena
- Business influence, including ownership stakes, brand-building, and media ventures
- Platform use, meaning how effectively a figure shapes public discourse
- Generational significance, particularly in opening doors for athletes who follow
LeBron James checks every one of those boxes. TIME calls him “the athlete of the century,” not solely for his NBA records, but because he systematically redefined what a professional athlete can do in public life. His political engagement, his SpringHill entertainment company, and his consistent willingness to take unpopular stances set a new benchmark. The generations behind him are operating in a landscape he helped reshape.
Six athletes featured on the TIME100 Sports list have also been subjects of cover stories written by senior sports correspondent Sean Gregory in recent years alone : Caitlin Clark, Erling Haaland, Lindsey Vonn, A’ja Wilson, Eileen Gu, and Dana White. That overlap is not coincidental. Gregory has spent nearly 25 years tracking exactly this kind of crossover influence.
Sean Gregory and the journalism behind the list
Fifty cover stories. That is the milestone Sean Gregory reaches with this issue, having joined TIME in 2002 and covered his 10th Olympics in February 2026. A former Division I basketball player, Gregory brings a practitioner’s eye to elite sport. His 2008 shooting tutorial with a then 30-year-old Kobe Bryant has accumulated 11 million views on YouTube, which tells you something about the appetite for genuinely informed sports content.
| Athlete | Sport | Key influence factor |
|---|---|---|
| LeBron James | Basketball | Political engagement, business empire |
| Caitlin Clark | Basketball (WNBA) | Transforming women’s league viewership |
| Erling Haaland | Football (soccer) | Global brand, goal-scoring records |
| A’ja Wilson | Basketball (WNBA) | Advocacy, back-to-back MVP seasons |
| Lindsey Vonn | Alpine skiing | Longevity, comeback narrative |
| Dana White | MMA (UFC) | Reshaping combat sports globally |
Since 2024, Gregory has written 15 cover stories on sports figures and received a Billie Jean King Award finalist nomination for his coverage of female athletes. The rise of women’s sports is not a subplot in this issue; it is a central thread. Clark and Wilson, in particular, represent a shift in mainstream sports attention that is backed by real viewership data, not just feel-good headlines.
What this list signals for sports coverage going forward
The TIME100 Sports ranking does something more useful than celebrate the obvious names. It forces a serious question : what does influence actually mean when an athlete’s Instagram reach can dwarf a network broadcast, when a UFC event at the White House pulls political and entertainment worlds into the same room, when a women’s basketball game sells out arenas that NFL teams envy ?
Frankly, the old framework of “best player equals most important figure” no longer holds. The most influential people in sports today are those who understand their platform as a lever. LeBron James grasped this earlier than almost anyone. The next generation, watching his moves closely, is already acting on that lesson. The TIME100 Sports list is less a celebration of past achievements than a map of where sports power actually sits in 2026, and who is smart enough to use it.
