More than a decade after launching a league-branded magazine that folded after about three years, the NFL is again trying its hand at publishing. It has reached a licensing agreement with a relatively unknown publisher, Dauphin Media Group, to produce NFL Magazine, a monthly title debuting next month with 128 pages and a cover price of $5.50, or an annual subscription rate of $19.90.
The league is projecting an initial circulation of 400,000.
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A cover mock-up for NFL Magazine, debuting next month
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NFL Magazine is the first sports title from Dauphin. It has published Canadian Architecture & Design Magazine as well as Canadian and U.S. titles built around the popularity of TV home improvement guru Mike Holmes. NFL Magazine hits newsstands in a few weeks.
“We have other [magazine] projects in negotiation,’’ said Sam Yoon, Dauphin executive vice president of business and legal affairs, adding that NFL Magazine will be distributed through a combination of newsstand and subscription sales. In contrast, the former NFL-branded publication, NFL Insider, was a controlled-circulation magazine, sent free to around a million NFL Sunday Ticket subscribers.
Yoon said NFL Magazine will receive promotion from NFL Network and NFL.com. “We’re effectively under the NFL umbrella,’’ he said.
Under the deal, Dauphin will sell advertising and handle circulation and it can solicit ads from NFL sponsors. Kevin LaForce, the NFL’s vice president of media strategy and business development, said the magazine will debut with 40 ad pages and said the league hopes to increase circulation to an astounding 2 million within a year.
At that level, “NFL Magazine” would be in the ranks of Martha Stewart Living (which has 2.1 million for its monthly circulation), Seventeen magazine (2.0 million), Money (1.9 million) and Men’s Health (1.9 million), according to Audit Bureau of Circulations figures.
LaForce and Yoon declined to name any advertisers in the first issue, which will have stories on Cam Newton, Peyton Manning and the NFL Network’s “Game Day Morning’’ pregame show.
Yoon said there will be a digital version of the magazine but not one designed specifically for tablets.
LaForce described the business arrangement with Dauphin as a licensing deal in which the league shares in ad revenue after certain targets are met.
“This is an opportunity for us to extend what we’ve been doing on other platforms,” he said. “We’re positioning it as part of the NFL family, with NFL Network and NFL Films.”
Under a business arrangement that also included publishing rights for the highly profitable Super Bowl program, NFL Insider, the league’s last licensed magazine, debuted in September 1999 as a 180-page, 1 million circulation value-add to Sunday Ticket subscribers. NFL Insider varied between four and eight annual issues.
The title initially prospered but then suffered through a recession and a number of ownership changes: Petersen Publishing was bought by Emap, and then Primedia bought Emap’s U.S. magazines in 2001. Time Warner’s Sports Illustrated was close enough to taking over as publisher in 2003 that a contract of more than 100 pages was drawn up. However, multiple sources said Steve Bornstein, NFL executive
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NFL Insider, the league’s last licensed magazine, folded in 2003.
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vice president of media, scuttled that deal, as he wanted NFL Insider to be a weekly in-season and SI did not want to publish a competitive product.
NFL Insider folded later that year.
LaForce said times have changed and the environment is right for a print title.
“We’re a different organization,” LaForce said, “with many of our media efforts [NFL Network and NFL.com] in-house to support a good business model and manage the risk more efficiently.”
This business arrangement for NFL Magazine does not include Super Bowl or Pro Bowl program rights, which remain with publishing company H.O. Zimman.
Elle publisher Kevin O’Malley, who was president of Emap’s sports division from 2000 to 2003, questioned whether any magazine dedicated to the NFL could sustain a year-round audience.
“To succeed, you need a more broad editorial range than just NFL on the field,” said O’Malley, who spent eight years at Esquire as publisher before joining Elle in May. “Health and fitness is a real editorial opportunity and would bring advertisers like nutrition bars and sports drinks, and these days, NFL is much more of an entertainment and pop culture vehicle, so that’s an opportunity. The real question is what kind of relationship it will have with NFL sponsors. The NFL can deliver equity and visibility, but one blue-chip advertiser in every category does not make for a healthy magazine. It has to be a magazine or TV sponsorship model, not a league sponsorship model, where there’s an emphasis on exclusivity.”
Chris Russo, founder and CEO of Fantasy Sports Ventures, oversaw NFL Insider during his tenure handling the NFL’s new media and publishing from 1999 to 2005. “The economics got difficult with Insider as a controlled circulation play, and there was more enthusiasm within the league to invest in growth areas like satellite radio and Internet, so a magazine became difficult to justify,” Russo said. “Still, there are things like features and photo spreads you can do in a magazine format that you can’t really do justice to in any other medium, so there’s an opportunity to build something that appeals to fans.”
In January, Dauphin plans to support NFL Magazine by opening offices in Los Angeles, where the NFL Network and the league’s Internet operations are based. That would bring the subject of an NFL magazine full circle. The shuttering of NFL Insider in 2003 led to the closing of the NFL’s creative services offices in Los Angeles, one of the last business-side vestiges of the Pete Rozelle era at the league.
