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MMA print magazines
By Zach Arnold | February 17, 2006 | Print This
By Zach Arnold
Jason Gatties has a report about a new print-magazine publication about MMA in March. Money quote from the press release:
Editor in Chief Mike Carlson says that Real Fighter will deliver the in-depth, journalistic coverage of professional MMA that’s currently lacking in the marketplace. “The Internet has done a great job covering breaking news on fights and providing archival information, but there’s a need for a high-quality print magazine that offers personal profiles of the fighters themselves, while delivering behind-the-scenes stories and nuances of the sport,†says Carlson.
There are some interesting business angles to pay attention to regarding this new venture and why they are important.
The reality of the print-magazine industry right now is that it’s in a really big restructuring period. Online and digital content has killed print’s golden goose, which was a cash-cow value-play for such a long period of time. With cost restructuring for print material occuring in 2006, a big question arises:
Do you spend premium money for paper and photography in hopes of attracting a higher-scale audience? Or do you use cheaper-quality, more cost-effective paper and sacrifice photo quality to try to make up for sales by volume?
While any publishing company faces issues such as costs vs. quality, the real issue (in my opinion) to pay attention to regarding fight-based publications is advertising. Everyone knows that magazines survive via advertising. A lot of magazines are 25% content and 75% ads. You can’t escape it. Print magazines have a double premium for the reader - you pay for the magazine, and the publisher gets your money plus advertising revenue. This is why so many magazine upstarts are choosing to go to the old-fashioned (old media) print-style publication instead of an online subscription-based service. It’s a lot easier to make more money via print advertising than it is via online advertising, because with print advertising, you don’t know exactly how many people are seeing your ads. Yes, you know how many subscribers are reading a magazine, but you have no clue how many eyeballs you are truly getting in print ads. However, with online advertising, you get more for your money because you can get instant statistics regarding how many eyeballs are seeing your ads, where those eyeballs are coming from, and how many people seeing your ads are actually willing to pay for your services.
That’s the reason why you see upstarts continue to push the print-style publication model instead of an online subscription-based publication - advertising money. With online ads becoming a much more pursued option (especially animated multimedia clips), the magazine industry is dying because it’s lifeline - advertising - is starting to shift from print to online. Relying on print advertising for revenue is very “old media,” very much a page out of Madison Avenue.
Which leads me to a new theory (and one that I think is a gamble) that Publishing 2.0 discussed on February 13th - which is that somehow, someway, you create a “brand” through traditional means and then try to transform yourself into a digital media company.
Two words - good luck.
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Nice slick print mags are fun to peruse at Barnes and Noble over a coffee, but I haven’t ever bought a copy of Grappling or the like.