MEDIA WATCH
Sport First, the UK’s first national daily sports broadsheet, may have a far better chance of success than recent specialist newspapers
August 12 will see the launch of Sport First – a national daily broadsheet dedicated solely to sport. Will it follow in the footsteps of The Planet on Sunday and Sunday Business, or does it have the formula for success?
There are those who would say that The Planet on Sunday was never going to succeed because of its narrow field of interest. Sunday Business had supporters who believed that an all-business formula would work, yet the future of the title still looks uncertain.
If special interest magazines can exist in their hundreds, why has the same theory not worked for special interest newspapers?
Sport First is very different, and it has a far greater chance of success than the other newspaper launches of 1996.
There are several reasons for this. Firstly, and most significantly, there is a high level of interest in sport among the British public. There are many more people who are interested in watching and reading about sport than, for example, business and financial news. Furthermore, sports action is never in short supply. The year swiftly passes from football, into cricket, and on to rugby.
Secondly there is definite market gap for a daily sports publication in the UK. There have always been weekly and monthly specialist sports magazines, but never a daily title dedicated to all forms of sport, from football to chess. The UK is different to the rest of Europe in this respect. The majority of European countries have national daily sports papers, some selling up to 650,000 copies a day. The time is ripe for the UK to follow Europe.
Interest in sport is escalating. In 1989, no national newspapers had a separate sport section – today there are about a dozen. In the same period, the number of consumer sports magazines has more than doubled, from 178 to 372. The football magazine Match has reached a record ABC figure of nearly 200,000. And there are rumours that EMAP is working on another four sports titles.
Accordingly to TGI, nearly 17 million adults enjoy reading about sport in newspapers. But the explosion is not just limited to the print medium. Sky Sports Channel has been so successful that Sky launched Sky Sports 2.
Sport First is well positioned to fill a gap in the market. It will be combining an excellent editorial team with an experienced salesforce and realistic circulation targets.
The editorial team is headed by Bob Harris, previously sports editor of the Sunday Mirror. He will have access to an impressive list of writers including household names such as Jonah Lomu, Bobby Robson, Sue Barker, Terry Venables, David Platt and Bob Wilson.
The salesforce is headed by Peter Burt, previously advertisement manager at the Daily Telegraph. His experience at the national newspaper, known as the king of sports writing, will be invaluable. If the end product is as good as promised then the 100,000 circulation target seems likely to be broken.
One interesting prospect for the future could be a link between Sport First and Sunday Business. National papers often combine sport and business in one section.
