NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec 18, 2025--
Today Sports Illustrated® announced the return of its Sportsperson of the Year celebration to Las Vegas as well as four recipients of its annual awards. The ceremony will take place on Tuesday, January 6, 2026 at Wynn Las Vegas, the official home of Sportsperson 2025.
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The 2025 Sportsperson of the Year will be announced on January 2, 2026. Sports Illustrated will also honor a select group of other athletes who defined the year in sports. They include:
“This year represents meaningful change that will impact generations of basketball players and fans to come, and I’m honored Sports Illustrated is recognizing this work,” said Stewart. “It’s a special honor to be awarded alongside Napheesa, and I’m looking forward to celebrating the inspiring innovation and excellence of our fellow awardees in January.”
“Being named Sports Illustrated’s Innovators of the Year with Breanna is an incredible honor,” said Collier. “I’ve always believed that athletes have the power to shape the future of our sport, and I’m grateful to be recognized, along with my co-founder, for pushing those boundaries. This moment motivates me to keep building, keep advocating, and keep creating opportunities for the next generation.”
In its 71st year, Sports Illustrated’s Sportsperson of the Year honor recognizes the athlete or team that best represents, in character and performance, the ideals of excellence and sportsmanship. Previous Sportsperson of the Year winners include Simone Biles, Stephen Curry, Tom Brady, Megan Rapinoe, LeBron James, Serena Williams, Derek Jeter, Michael Phelps, Arthur Ashe, Muhammad Ali and Billie Jean King, among others. This marks the second year that Minute Media, operator of Sports Illustrated’s editorial business, is bringing the honoree event to the world’s largest gathering of innovation.
“Through the decades, SI’s Sportsperson of the Year franchise has evolved from a singular moment in a magazine into a multifaceted celebration of the best of the year in sports,” said Steve Cannella, Editor in Chief of Sports Illustrated. “We’re excited to grow this event in Las Vegas and can’t wait to honor Michael, Cal, Breanna and Napheesa for their performance, their vision and their impact on the sports world and beyond.”
If you’re interested in requesting a press credential to cover the event, please submit a request HERE.
About Sports Illustrated
For 70 years, Sports Illustrated (SI) has been recognized for shaping modern culture at the intersection of sports, lifestyle, and entertainment. SI is a 360-degree platform that unites athletes, teams and fans worldwide through quality content, innovative digital experiences, unforgettable events, and original products. Its award-winning media arm brings powerful storytelling to life through probing profiles and up-to-date news on SI.com, across social media platforms, and through its renowned print magazine whose cover is widely regarded as the most coveted space in sports media. SI brings its unique perspective to marquee events and captivating brand activations including: “SI The Party”, Club SI, the Sportsperson of the Year Awards, SI Swimsuit Launch Weekend, and the SI Circuit Series.
For more information, visit SI.com.
Follow Sports Illustrated on X, Instagram, Tik Tok and Facebook.
About Minute Media
Minute Media is a global technology and content company specializing in sports and culture. Minute Media's proprietary tech platform enables the creation, distribution and monetization of digital content experiences. They own and operate leading sports content brands, including The Players' Tribune, FanSided, and 90min, and serve as the publisher of Sports Illustrated and Sports Illustrated Swimsuit across digital and print platforms. Minute Media also provides sports highlight rights through their recent technology acquisition of STN Video. The company reaches 200M monthly users, powering 1,500+ content creators and 400+ distribution partners across 14 global markets in 10 languages. They also reach a robust print subscriber base through the publication of Sports Illustrated, Sports Illustrated Swim and Sports Illustrated Kids magazines. Minute Media has offices in New York, London, Tel-Aviv, São Paulo and Asia.
For more information, visit www.MinuteMedia.com.
About Wynn Las Vegas
Wynn Resorts is the recipient of more Forbes Travel Guide Five Star Awards than any other independent hotel company in the world and in 2025 was once again honored on FORTUNE Magazine’s World’s Most Admired Companies list. Wynn and Encore Las Vegas have two luxury hotel towers with a total of 4,748 spacious hotel rooms, suites and villas. The resort features approximately 196,000 square feet of casino space, 22 signature dining experiences, 10 bars, two award-winning spas, approximately 560,000 rentable square feet of meeting and convention space, approximately 174,000 square feet of retail space as well as two showrooms, two nightclubs, a beach club, and recreation and leisure facilities, including Wynn Golf Club, an 18-hole championship golf course. For more information on Wynn and Encore Las Vegas, visit newsroom.wynnresorts.com.
Sports Illustrated Announces Return to Wynn Las Vegas for Sportsperson of the Year Awards Ceremony, Award Winners
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV on Thursday made his most important U.S. appointment to date, naming a fellow Chicagoan as the next archbishop of New York to lead one of the biggest U.S. archdioceses as it navigates relations with the Trump administration and its immigration crackdown.
Bishop Ronald Hicks, the current bishop of Joliet, Illinois, replaces the retiring Cardinal Timothy Dolan, a prominent conservative figure in the U.S. Catholic hierarchy. Hicks takes over after Dolan last week finalized a plan to establish a $300 million fund to compensate victims of sexual abuse who had sued the archdiocese.
Dolan had submitted his resignation in February, as required when he turned 75. But the Vatican often waits to make important leadership changes in dioceses if there is lingering abuse litigation or other governance matters that need to be resolved by the outgoing bishop.
The handover, though, represents a significant new chapter for the U.S. Catholic Church, which is forging a new era with the Chicago-born Leo as the first American pope. Leo and the U.S. hierarchy have already shown willingness to challenge the Trump administration on immigration and other issues, and Hicks is seen as very much a Leo-style bishop.
Hicks, 58, grew up in South Holland, Illinois, a short distance from the suburban Chicago childhood home of Leo, the former Robert Prevost.
Like Prevost, who spent 20 years as a missionary in Peru, Hicks worked for five years in El Salvador heading a church-run orphanage program that operated in nine Latin American and Caribbean countries.
“Taking a new position as archbishop of New York is an enormous responsibility, but I can honestly say that Bishop Hicks is up to the task,” said the Rev. Eusebius Martis, who has known Hicks since the mid-1980s and worked with him at Mundelein Seminary, the Chicago archdiocesan seminary.
“He is a wonderful man, always thoughtful and attentive to the needs of seminarians,” Martis, professor of sacramental theology at the Pontifical Liturgical Institute of Sant’Anselmo, the Benedictine University in Rome, said in an email.
In November, Hicks endorsed a special message from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops condemning the Trump administration’s immigration raids, which have targeted Chicago in particular.
In a statement then urging Catholics to share the message, Hicks said it “affirms our solidarity with all our brothers and sisters as it expresses our concerns, opposition, and hopes with clarity and conviction. It is grounded in the church’s enduring commitment to the Catholic social teaching of human dignity and a call for meaningful immigration reform.”
Though they both hail from Chicago, Hicks only met the future pope in 2024, when then-Cardinal Prevost visited one of Hicks’ parishes and took part in a question and answer conversation for the public.
Hicks, who sat in the front pew, said he learned that day what sort of future pope Leo would be and said he liked what he saw both in his public remarks and then in their private conversation. “Five minutes turned into 10 minutes and the 10 minutes turned into 15 and the 15 turned into 20,” Hicks told local Chicago WGN-TV news after Leo’s May election.
He said he recognized their shared backgrounds and priorities to build bridges. “We grew up literally in the same radius, in the same neighborhood together. We played in the same parks, went swimming in the same pools, like the same pizza places.”
Hicks served as a parish priest in Chicago and dean of training at Mundelein Seminary before Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich made him vicar general of the archdiocese in 2015. Three years later, Hicks was made an auxiliary bishop, and in 2020 Pope Francis named him bishop of Joliet, serving around 520,000 Catholics in seven counties.
Cupich, seen as a progressive in the U.S. church, has been a close adviser to both Francis and Leo, and Hicks’ appointment to such a prominent job likely could not have come without Cupich’s endorsement.
The New York archdiocese is among the largest in the nation, serving roughly 2.5 million Catholics in Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island in New York City, as well as seven counties to the north.
The gregarious Dolan is one of the most high-profile Catholic leaders in the United States and a prominent voice in the city.
Dolan is widely viewed as conservative, writing a 2018 Wall Street Journal column headlined “The Democrats Abandon Catholics.” Yet in 2023, he also wrote a letter of welcome to a conference at Fordham University celebrating outreach programs aimed at LGBTQ+ Catholics, and he welcomed LGBTQ+ participation in the city’s annual St. Patrick’s Day parade.
Dolan has ties to the current Republican administration. As archbishop of New York, Dolan hosted the annual Al Smith white-tie dinner that raises millions of dollars for Catholic charities. It has traditionally offered candidates from both parties the chance to trade lighthearted barbs ahead of Election Day, though in 2024 only Donald Trump participated since Democratic nominee Kamala Harris declined the invitation.
Trump, who has long-standing connections to his native New York City, later had the cardinal pray at his inauguration and appointed Dolan to his new Religious Liberty Commission.
Dolan was Trump’s pick to succeed Pope Francis, though Dolan did criticize the president for sharing an AI-generated image of Trump, who is not a Catholic, dressed up as a pope before the May conclave that ultimately elected Leo.
Dolan was named archbishop of New York by Pope Benedict XVI in February 2009 after serving as archbishop of Milwaukee. He was made cardinal in 2012 and headed the U.S. bishops conference from 2010-2013.
In one of his biggest first tasks, Hicks will have to oversee the implementation of the abuse settlement fund that Dolan finalized, which is to be paid for by reducing the archdiocesan budget and selling off assets. The aim is to cover settlements for most, if not all of the roughly 1,300 outstanding abuse claims against the archdiocese.
Hicks is no stranger to managing the fallout of the abuse scandal, after the Joliet diocese under his predecessors and the rest of the Illinois church came under scathing criticism by the state’s attorney general in 2023.
A five-year investigation found that 451 Catholic clergy abused 1,997 children in Illinois between 1950 and 2019. Hicks had been appointed to lead the Joliet church in 2020. The attorney general’s report was generally positive in recognizing the diocese’s current child protection policies, but documented several cases where previous Joliet bishops moved known abusers around, disparaged victims and refused to accept responsibility for their role in enabling the abuse.
Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
New York Archbishop, Timothy Dolan, right, greets Bishop Ronald Hicks during a news conference, Thursday, Dec.18, 2025 in New York. (AP Photo/Ryan Murphy)
Bishop Ronald Hicks speaks during a news conference, Thursday, Dec.18, 2025 in New York. (AP Photo/Ryan Murphy)
FILE - Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York attends a news conference at the North American College in Rome, May 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia, File)
