EMAP Metro plans men’s glossy launch Total Sport

EMAP Metro has confirmed its entry into the sports magazine market with the launch of Total Sport in November, as predicted in Marketing Week (March 31).

The glossy men’s magazine will be edited by former Q editor Danny Kelly and will cover the main UK spectator sports. It will start as a bi-monthly, becoming a monthly in January 1996.

The magazine began as a supplement with the May issue of Q and has been put through qualitative and quantitative research since. EMAP Metro managing director Barry McIlheney says it will be a Q Magazine for the general sports market with a similar mix of irreverent, but knowledgeable editorial.

“It will not be about getting down the gym to lose your love handles,” says McIlheney. “It will be populist but not downmarket and will cover sport as part of the entertainment industry.”

McIlheney dismissed concerns that the men’s sports market cannot support another magazine after the launch of two health magazines, three football magazines in the past year and a rugby title coming from Future Publishing in the autumn.

“There isn’t a general sports magazine in the market – it is the football market that’s crowded. Sport has changed and grown over the past ten years so that it is now a big sexy business,” he says.

An internal replacement for Kelly as editor of Q will be announced next week.