THE 50 MOST INFLUENTIAL FIGURES IN SPORTS

THE 50 MOST INFLUENTIAL FIGURES IN SPORTS

hat is influence? You know it when you feel it—and it’s not limited to those who rack up Ws. The sports landscape is shaped by all kinds of power brokers: dealmakers, cultural titans, icons of leadership and, yes, incredibly high achievers. Some are athletes who push limits, redefine success and have an outsized impact between and outside the lines. Some are dominant coaches or Hall of Famers crafting legacies in real time. The sports conversation is also driven by 

influencers—social stars, style icons, tastemakers and opinion shapers—and business titans who know that the negotiating table can be as competitive as any field or court. Power can shift, but right now in 2024, these are the 50 most influential figures and forces in sports.

ICONS AND LEADERS 

LeBron James

LOS ANGELES LAKERS FORWARD

While pro basketball’s G.O.A.T. debate rages, the G.O.A.R—greatest of all résumés—is a settled argument. Consider the first page of James’s curriculum vitae: 21 seasons (and counting), four NBA titles, three Olympic gold medals and the league’s all-time scoring record. James will finish his career with more than $500 million in on-court earnings and with more than 200 million followers on Instagram and X. He wields more influence than any American athlete. So what do you get the player with everything? How about a chance to play with his son? That’s what the Lakers gave James by drafting 19-year-old Bronny out of USC with the 55th pick in June. The James duo will be only the fourth father and son to team up in a major professional sport and the first ever to share an NBA floor. —Chris Mannix

Joe Murphy/NBAE/Getty Images

Tiger Woods

PGA TOUR GOLFER

On the course, what the 15-time major winner achieved in 2024 will be just a blip in his bio. He played in a mere five events, completed 11 rounds and made the cut only once. But off the course Woods became one of the game’s most influential power brokers. Last year he was given a seat on the PGA Tour Policy Board, and this year he has been a central figure in negotiations with the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) to strike a deal between the Tour and rival LIV Golf. Woods is so consumed with shaping the sport’s future that he passed on a U.S. Ryder Cup captaincy in 2025 to better focus on the task at hand. Oh, and this year he also teamed up with TaylorMade Golf to launch his own clothing line, Sun Day Red, in the process ditching the Nike swoosh that no athlete this side of Michael Jordan has been more associated with. —Jeff Ritter

Gregory Shamus/Getty Images

ERICK W. RASCO/SPORTS ILLUSTRATED

Simone Biles

U.S. GYMNAST

ust like in 1996, the 2024 U.S. women’s gymnastics team won Olympic gold wearing white leotards that made them appear to be draped in the American flag. Unlike in 1996, they also wore smiles. That, perhaps even more than any hardware, is the Simone Biles effect.   

“They used to try to put [gymnasts] in a box, and they were like, ‘If you [aren’t] like this, then you’re not going to be successful,’ ” Biles said in Paris. “And whenever I came around, it wasn’t really my style. At the [Károlyi Ranch, the former national team training facility], nobody really would talk and laugh and all that stuff. But I was like, Yeah, that’s not how I do gymnastics. So I’m going to continue to do it how I know and how I love, because it’s the reason why I fell in love with the sport.”

As always, Biles, 27, faced questions in Paris about her legacy and largely demurred. Eleven Olympic medals, the most ever for an American gymnast; 41 total Olympic and world championship medals, extending her lead as the most decorated gymnast of all time; five eponymous skills? “I would’ve had to Google that,” she said. “I don’t keep count.”   

But this is what she will leave behind whenever she is done: a team that looks more like her, in so many ways. When Biles was a child, she believed her ceiling as a Black gymnast was a college scholarship. Now four of the top U.S. gymnasts are Black: Biles, two-time Olympian Jordan Chiles, and Shilese Jones and Skye Blakely, two members of the 2023 world championship team. Along with Suni Lee, who is Hmong American, and Hezly Rivera, whose parents were born in the Dominican Republic, the Paris team was 80% people of color, the highest percentage in history.    

When Biles was growing up, most female gymnasts peaked before they finished high school. But she likes to say she is aging “like fine wine,” and the rest of the sport has followed. In Paris, the team’s average age of 22.5 was the oldest in U.S. history.   

And then there are the smiles. At the Károlyi Ranch, 60 miles north of Houston, where Béla and Márta Károlyi started training camps in the 1980s and ran the U.S. gymnastics program beginning in 2000, there was a culture that many have said amounted to verbal, emotional and physical abuse. (The Károlyis have denied all allegations.) The facility was also the site of some of the assaults perpetrated by former team doctor Larry Nassar, who pleaded guilty in November 2017 to 10 counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct and was later sentenced to 40 to 175 years in state prison. Days after Biles released a statement in January 2018, lamenting that she would have to return to the place she was abused, USA Gymnastics cut ties with the Károlyis.  

After Tokyo, when a case of the twisties derailed her Olympics, she could have retired. Instead she began a conversation about mental health in sports, then returned to gymnastics and dominated the world, as she always had.  

In Paris, her events were the hottest ticket in town. She blew kisses to fans during competition and talked about her therapist after it. The world was watching. She showed it a lot more than gymnastics. —Stephanie Apstein

Dan Hurley

UCONN MEN'S BASKETBALL COACH

In a family of coaches, he had long been known as the “third Hurley,” behind father Bob and brother Bobby. But that was before Dan led UConn to back-to-back national championships while winning all 12 NCAA tournament games by double digits. Predictably, suitors came calling this offseason, but Hurley, 51, turned down a pair of tempting job offers—one from Kentucky and another from the Lakers. Hurley opted to stay with the Huskies who rewarded him with a new, six-year $50 million contract, setting himself up to build a dynasty in Storrs and become the face of men’s college basketball.   —Kevin Sweeney

Greg Nelson/Sports Illustrated

Bob Bowman

TEXAS DIRECTOR OF SWIMMING AND DIVING

The coach who built Michael Phelps into a medal machine again showed his prowess in 2024 with an NCAA men’s title at Arizona State and a bountiful Olympics. If the United Nations of Bowman had been its own entry in Paris, its seven golds, three silvers and one bronze would have been third in the swimming medal table, behind only the U.S. and Australia. That was the haul for Bowman trainees Léon Marchand of France (four golds, one bronze), Regan Smith of the U.S. (two golds, three silver) and Hubert Kós of Hungary (one gold). Now Bowman is taking over at Texas and the next hotshot from France, 17-year-old Olympian Rafael Fente-Damers, has already committed to the Longhorns. So Bowman, 59, will continue to train international stars to beat Americans while also coaching many of the U.S.’s best. —Pat Forde