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What do readers look for in an MMA magazine?

By Zach Arnold | November 8, 2010

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I’m not an avid reader of MMA magazines, but I recently received a stack of five different magazines from a friend who wanted me to see what they were all about. I’m more of a newspaper/journal kind of guy, so I fully admit that I’m not the typical magazine reader. With that said, I came away very surprised at the format of many of the MMA mags and here’s a few takeaways I had after reading them. (If you are an editor for one of the bigger MMA magazines, I’ll be happy to give you specific details if you contact me.)

Bombardment of graphics

After getting over the sticker shock of most of the publications ($5 ~ $7 an issue), my immediate takeaway was just how much the magazines rely on photos, ads, and layouts. It’s overwhelming, to say the least, and I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be looking for.

No focus on content

I’ve been told that some publications have great articles. So, I went through some articles (the ones that I could find) and I wasn’t that impressed at all. Excluding the actual article content, the presentation is striking. The fonts used are incredibly small (making it hard to read and focus) and everything else in the layout distracts you from reading the text. It seems like the articles are largely an afterthought as opposed to being the main crux of the magazines.

Of the magazines that I saw, the UFC magazine was the best at placing focus on article content.

Ads and pictures

I understand that publishers have to pay the bills, but it’s hard to swallow having someone pay $6 for a magazine and then have at least 40% of the publication be ads. On top of that, the excessive layout spreads of models. If I want to look for that kind of thing, I’ll go on the internet.

Even more interesting is the kind of sponsors the magazines are attracting. It’s largely all clothing or supplement companies. The variety isn’t all that different. Now, to be fair, I have not been put in a position to where I’ve had to shop around a publication to attract sponsorships, but it seems as if the most common publications attract very similar sponsors (like ring tone companies, gyms, so on and so forth.)

Short attention spans

I tend to be a details-oriented guy, so I guess I have a mid-to-long level attention span which makes me out of the norm for the ADD-addled MMA audience buying the publications. Everything seemed short in terms of article length, lots of blurbs, lots of things to keep your eyes moving around on the page while skimming… I understand that people who read magazines don’t read 100% of the material in them, but it seems a full reverse is on display here to not encourage you to read the articles at all.

Bottom line: I came away, in general, largely disappointed with the magazines that I saw. Not enough focus on reading material and too much focus elsewhere. However, I’m willing to give ground on the fact that perhaps I’m not the target audience of these publications. What kind of thoughts do you have in general on the MMA magazine landscape and how would you improve some of the publications that you have read?

Books

I received a copy in the mail of The MMA Encyclopedia on Friday. This thing is massive. You could use it as a weapon in a fight. One thing is clear when you check it out — a lot of hard work went into making this reference book. It’s detailed and very readable. I hate hate books that use hard-to-read fonts or bad layout designs. This book, in particular, had a clean and organized layout that I give a thumbs up to. As far as what the book was missing… perhaps a CD/DVD version of the book could have been attached to the printed copy as a bonus?

If you’re looking for a good fight-themed book to pick up, check out From the Fields to the Garden: The Life of Stitch Duran.

Topics: Media, MMA, Zach Arnold | 12 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |

12 Responses to “What do readers look for in an MMA magazine?”

  1. Boco_T says:

    Was Fight Magazine one of the ones you read? Fight has by far the best writing talent and article quality of any MMA magazine. But you’re right in general, almost no articles in any of the magazines are more than a single page. Fight at least spends 5-8 pages on a few of the features each month and gets talent like Sam Sheridan, Chuck Mindenhall, and Kelly Crigger to write the more prominent pieces. The editor-in-chief, Donovan Craig, is also very good and he has done a few features about “I’m a writer but I’m actually going to fight.”

    I’ve never bothered with ones like Fighters Only or Tapout or whatever, because those have nearly no content. The UFC magazine is only marginally above the level of those. Generally an article in UFC magazine, even with the tiny print, won’t get above 3 pages. There’s also too much of the UFC magazine focused on ad-content, like the “check out these winter coats” and “check out these cars” pages.

  2. 45 Huddle says:

    The UFC Magazine is junk. I bought it because I needed some light reading material for a day. The one with Brock Lesnar on the cover. Pretty much a waste of money. Way too many ads. Very little content that was interesting. There was a photo shoot from Hef’s ex girlfriend, the one from Girls Next Door.

    The MMA Encyclopedia would do much better if it was online. Reference books, which I assume that one is, are going away from paper.

    It would do much better being a website like Wikipedia, even if they don’t allow people to make changes. That allows the most eyeballs to the content.

    I’m still surprised nobody has really done that in MMA. A real detailed website on the history of the sport, with clickable links and search capabilities. That to me goes hand in hand with something like the fight finder.

    • Norm says:

      It’d be great if sherdog’s fight finder included links to the fight play by play and event summary’s/writeups.

  3. Rollo the Cat says:

    I am shocked it took you so long to find this out Zach. I liked the early FC Fighter a bit and then there was another magazine, I can’t exactly remember the name…Fight Scene?.. Fighter?…I don’t know, but it was halfway classy.

    I picked up a copy of one of those loud, mma/bikini magazines at the bookstore about a year ago and read an article about a famous BJJ guy who I knew personally for many years growing up. The story they gave was hilariously innacurate, as if they deliberately got everything wrong. Stunning.

  4. Zack says:

    I used to love buying FCF back when it was in the big newspaper format. Haven’t read an MMA mag in like 5 years though.

  5. Fluyid says:

    The magazine that Fightsport did was the best one in the genre that I’ve seen. They did one issue.

    It came out around 2004 or so and I can’t even remember the name of it. Had Wanderlai Silva on the cover.

    • Fluyid says:

      The magazine I’m referring to was called “Fightscene” and came out in 2003 or earlier.

      (I added this because the “.com” I had in my post above was removed and it changed what I was talking about.)

  6. Bryan says:

    I actually don’t mind International Kickboxer and they have a great section about the scene in Thailand and the happenings there, but here in the US by the time it gets here the news is about 10 month old if not more.

  7. liger05 says:

    I used to buy weekly pro and Gong magazine. I couldnt read Japanese but those magazine’s just looked like quality.

  8. Johny says:

    You should list each title and make specific points. The editors of said magazines are sure to pay mind to what MMA fans want instead of pushing out the cheapest product possible.

  9. Dave says:

    I have a friend who is an editor for an independent horror magazine, so I can probably give some insight into the bullshit one faces in publishing a magazine in 2010. Most people who publish a smaller magazine without a huge parent company have to make each retail outlet happy and also understand they will be paid only for the magazines sold and the rest are discarded, not shipped back to them for inventory. They also require a certain number of magazines per issue. Basically printing a magazine in this day and age is a money-loser no matter what.

    Most of those MMA magazines are garbage; the writing is poor, the news and opinions are outdated, no original content, way too many ads and little to no design.

    The money and talent goes to the internet now, period.

    Ed. — I’d like to know where the money is!

  10. jim genia says:

    The beauty of FCF was that it wasn’t driven by ad sales, so it could be thick with content. The paper was supported by the clothing line.

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