There was no space for Sport&Style
In this guest post, Sport & Style’s founding editor Nik Howe suggests that the magazine’s demise was inevitable.
Far be it from me to piss on the grave of Sport&Style, I am genuinely disappointed to have this Fairfax magazine insert depart the domestic media landscape, partly because it was the one Australian men’s magazine that didn’t reinforce a macho and sexiest attitude or have (male) tits on the cover, but mostly because of the talented staff that remained there after my departure and who continued to produce an excellent publication.
But it didn’t bode well from the outset. In the month of our launch [March 2009], Arena – a 22-year-old British bastion of gentleman’s publishing – finally called it a day rather than die of old age and a month later, Maxim, a former employer of mine and one of the original purveyors of tits and arse, had gone as crude and rude as it could go.
I, too, was also starting to realise that the words sport and style were not happy bedfellows here in Australia. Yes, internationally, David Beckham advertised underpants and Roger Federer wore one of the world’s most expensive watches on his wrist, but Australia’s biggest sporting star, Ricky Ponting, endorsed motor oil and with nowhere near the same panache that Cristiano Ronaldo does for Castrol.
Here it was different. People who liked sport read the back pages of newspapers and those that liked style read GQ. The crossover was limited in a country with a small population. But, as an editorial team, we were up the proverbial creek without a paddle. High end men’s interest advertisers, the type Fairfax coveted to make this publication financially successful, dine out on cars, liquor, fashion, grooming and technology. They don’t advertise around sport. Yes, we could juggle the format, but only so much. Fairfax curiously licenced the title (from the French newspaper group L’Equipe) rather than gave birth to it, so not only was there a costly licence fee to pay at the end of each month but there were hefty editorial restrictions too. The not dissimilar in concept Observer Sport Monthly also went under in 2009 without that same quagmire to wade through.
But those complications, as well as the fact the magazine was launched with a full time staff of three and a marketing budget a journalist could have afforded, are not unlike the hurdles any newly launched magazine fronts up to (speaking from experience).
There are, however, lots of other reasons why the men’s magazine market is collapsing. They have become irrelevant. The audience is now so well served elsewhere, there isn’t any need to wait 30, or in some cases, 60 days for a publication that purports to be on the pulse, but realistically may have been produced 45 to 90 days in advance of a reader getting a copy.
The web, or if Wired magazine is to be believed the internet, has well and truly snatched the onus from print and demonstrates a broad understanding of what men want and in the way they want it. During the mid-nineties your average editorial synopsis for a bloke’s magazine would have read something like this: girls, gadgets, sport, cars, pop culture and jokes. They made you feel like you were part of a gang. Now, all that information and more is readily available at the touch of button and you can be the leader of your own gang and have as many factions as you like.
I grew up with magazines such as The Face and Esquire defining what I listened to, watched, read and wore. But unfortunately, the game is up for ink and print in its current state. There is an entire generation of people that have come of age in front of a web browser and seek that very same guidance and entertainment in different and disparate places.
Much to my sadness – I will always love magazines – I’ve become one of those exact people who finds it easier to pull everything I read online into a feed reader for free rather than pay $10 to peruse a magazine with content I read so long ago it’s no longer relevant.
The answer isn’t in the iPad either. Not only is the number of iPad owners in Australia smaller than the combined reach of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, but people aren’t buying iPads to read magazines, they’re reading magazines to test out their iPads. And the consensus so far is bad. Too many apps paying homage to their print heritage, leaving readers unsatisfied and out of pocket, publishers with little or no return on their huge investment and developers laughing all the way to the bank. Until publishers realise that content is king, not its format or how close you can zoom up on text, this experiment will continue to fail or be a missed opportunity to make something significant happen for an industry that so desperately needs its right now.
I do still believe, however, that for magazines to survive, they need to be more than just words and pictures on a static page. The(sydney)magazine has it right with the Top 100 and so too do GQ with the Man of the Year. But too many publishers show a lack of ambition and an inability to exploit the potential for the products they launch, instead solely using them as a vehicle to mine money from advertisers. Fairfax unfortunately launched Sport&Style for all the wrong reasons – because they thought there were dollars in the market not because readers were crying out for that type of content.
- Nik Howe was the founding editor of Sport&Style and now combines his own solo projects with work he executes for clients online and offline.
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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Hopefully Australian media is one little step closer to realising that England and the English aren’t automatically experts in the Australian media landscape.
No matter how endearing their accents are or how much they pump up their CV if they were as good as they say they were back in Blightey, they would have stayed. Or at least moved to New York!
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Shame to see it go.
But having the same products repeated in all Australian magazines makes for dull choices – no differentiation anymore. Look at something like Monocle; a great read and has an interesting take on the world. Shame every mens magazine here focuses on Sydney or Melbourne, or features someone who loves NY or LA or London. Or some stupid sporting star and their favourite things to have.
Life goes on…
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Pointless opinion pieces AND not making Buck Mag. How does he have the time?
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Why did Howe leave Sport & Style again?
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this is a great piece. I like this bit of honesty in particular
“…people aren’t buying iPads to read magazines, they’re reading magazines to test out their iPads.”
can someone let News Ltd know?
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“Fairfax curiously licenced the title (from the French newspaper group L’Equipe) rather than gave birth to it, so not only was there a costly licence fee to pay at the end of each month but there were hefty editorial restrictions too. ”
Ah, the Fairfax mindset in all its glory!
If you do something original and it fails, you might be fired. Better to ape an overseas idea and, if it fails, well it’s the Internet sapping revenue, or global warming or the fact that the month has an R in it.
Meanwhile, the Age persists with the legacy of a former half-pint editor — himself imported — who made that paper a clone of The Guardian. And the sad thing is that there is apparently no one left in Media House with the wit or balls to say it isn’t working and suggest an alternative.
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It always looked anaemic to me. Not surprised to see it go.
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If you know it was inevitable why did you take the job?
(Edited by Mumbrella for legal reasons)
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So – if you launch a premium priced magazine, in an eonomy with slow consumer spending and distribute it en mass at full cost (SMH) – expecting to be able to pin point your the target audience and make a buck you’re going to fail.. DUH!
And why is Howe blaming Fairfax, like he was a separate to the failure? He must have had a say in the product and strategy… he should have accepted some responsibility.
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The problem was it had no rugby league or made smart alec comments about it. Fact is the game is the biggest sport in the biggest market. It didn’t suit the clientele S&S was looking for, but it meant by leaving it out you lost a major audience source. Alpha and Inside Sport haven’t made that mistake. Not even the Herald’s sport section has made that mistake.
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Why does Tim keep giving this loser coverage on mumbrella. Get over the fact that you shared cubicles at TimeOut Dubai and move on.
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Good question above as to why he took the job if he knew its demise was inevitable? However, two great points in here: the aforementioned reason why people are buying magazines Ipads apps and this:
“Fairfax unfortunately launched Sport&Style for all the wrong reasons – because they thought there were dollars in the market not because readers were crying out for that type of content.”
When was the last time Fairfax launched ANYTHING because readers wanted it and not because of potential ad dollars?
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I can confidently say that every issue of Sport&Style, bar one, I presided over made its advertising target, and it may well have continued to do so after my departure. But this opinion piece was written to highlight the handicaps with which Sport&Style was already saddled in a fast-changing media landscape and encourage debate around the death of traditional men’s magazines and the rise of mediums that men now use as their primary source of entertainment and information.
I stand by my decision to take on the job of launching Sport&Style, but would argue that publishing for profit is a five-year plan minimum, and media owners have to be prepared to invest in their products, their potential beyond printed paper and, most importantly, the people who produce them.
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(Edited by Mumbrella for legal reasons)
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comment 14 will get the “legal reasons” italics within minutes!
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A key problem with the demise might have been that those who developed the business plan for the magazines launch left just after its induction, and the remaining were left to work with a new media agency who got the Fairfax account based on the fact that they told them NOT to launch S&S.
All factors which were pretty evident in its pitch to market. It was launched as the bastard child of their portfolio and hence was bought similarly.
Nik actually raises valid points about the mens magazine industry in Australia, but it doesnt seem that these were founding reasons to kill S&S, as it had done a lot worse in previous months than it is now.
This shouldnt be a reflection on the editorial staff or its direct sales team in my opinion. Tim, has Fairfax released a statement about it that I havent seen?
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I enjoyed S&S but always felt it was a product in seach of an audience rather than a product that met an audience and commercial need. Have an issue with this though “…people aren’t buying iPads to read magazines, they’re reading magazines to test out their iPads.” Erm, people aren’t certainly aren’t buying iPads to read unimaginative mag apps with no fresh content or additional functionality.
As for corblimey’s comment, why don’t you move to London and see how far you get in the media with that attitude. Idiot.
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“When was the last time Fairfax launched ANYTHING because readers wanted it and not because of potential ad dollars?”
Jeff, why are you reading mumbrella when you have no idea how the media industry works? (or any industry for that matter).
PS: Riarn strikes again
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(Edited by Mumbrella for legal reasons)
And Ricky Ponting is our greatest sporting star?
Andrew Bogut and Mark Weber might have something to say about that.
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Nick Howe, a man so brilliant and prescient that he named his non existent future men’s lifestyle bible, on an already existing and very successful english version that IS;
A. real
b. Successful
Buck me, isn’t Australia truly the lucky country to have him
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Buck is an ongoing project, an experiment if you like, into interesting new ways to deliver good content for men. None of us feel any pressure to appease industry commentators by launching something we don’t want to or have to close in six months. We’re not taking ourselves too seriously. We’re just having fun doing what we do and if nothing happens, no one will have been hurt.
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