Campaign reports the demise of Sport magazine, concluding that this unfortunate event is the result of the recession. There is no doubt that economic conditions played their part, but they are not wholly responsible. The reason for the fact that general sports titles fail in the UK lies not in the fact that we are, in the words of Sport’s MD Greg Miall, facing “the worst recession in 80 years”, nor in the free distribution model adopted by the magazine, but in the psyche of the UK sports fan.
To illustrate, I draw a comparison between Britain and America. Across the pond resides the great grand-daddy of all general sports titles, Sports Illustrated. This publication carries regular news on all four major US sports and strong coverage of – er – minority sports like NASCAR, golf, football (soccer), tennis and so on. With an audited circulation of around 3m per week, it’s a successful model that many have tried to emulate on this side of the Atlantic.
Some UK attempts to create a general sports market have been truly outstanding from a journalistic and publishing perspective.Total Sport in the 1990’s was a publishing triumph, a general sports fan’s dream, a commercial disaster. Though constructed very differently, I put Sport in the same high quality category.
Both magazines failed for the same reason: there are simply not enough “general sports” fans in the UK to sustain a general sports title. This is not the same in the USA, where almost every sports fan is a general sports fan. Britons and Americans consume sports in very different ways.
To illustrate: the American sports fan follows a baseball team, a football team, a basketball team and probably an ice hockey team. This gives him lots to cheer about, all year round. He supersizes his intake by following NCAA teams in all four sports too, so there’s something to watch on telly every single night. Because of the franchise model adopted by most American sports, there’s no promotion or relegation, so he can do this for ever. His interests are well catered for by Sports Illustrated, which knows this market well.
Contrast this with the UK sports fan. While many of us are perfectly able to observe multiple sports, we generally reserve our passions for only one. We are football fans, or rugby fans, or cricket fans and respectfully observe the breaks between seasons as a rest period in which we allow our enthusiasm to recuperate. To try to address such a collection of individual (and, socio-demographically speaking, quite different) audiences with a single general sports title, is a challenge that so far has proved insurmountable.
Sport in the UK does not unite us; it divides and defines us. It’s unfortunate for Sport magazine, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
By Scott Garrett on April 28th, 2009
Tags: Advertising, American football, Football, Golf, Media
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While I fully agree with Scott, that Sport magazine’s demise is not entirely due to the recession and much to do with our sporting mentality, I think there is also another layer on top of it which reflects the sporting consumption in the States. This is simply the size of the country.
In the States sports fans tend to consume their passion either live at the local home stadium (very few away fans) or on TV, while newspaper sport coverage is more centred on the local area. This gives a real need for a weekly sport digest summarising the state of play across the land matched to indepth analysis.
The premier sports magazine on the planet, Sports Illustrated reads more like a cross between The Spectator and UK newspaper sports pages with columnists of repute, current news across all sports and the best stars desperate to grace its front cover.
The UK on the other hand has a saturation of daily nationals that cover sport across the nation coupled to a strong regional media for team by team news.
Oh and one other thing, SI learned early what their target audience wants – their best selling edition every year? The Swimsuit edition…