By: Seth Sutel, AP Business Writer (AP) With the threat of a strike looming in professional baseball,
Baseball Weekly magazine is branching out into covering pro football when the new NFL season starts this fall.
The magazine will also change its name to
Sports Weekly, but Publisher and Executive Editor Lee Ivory said Thursday that the 11-year-old magazine has no plans to go up against its much larger rivals
Sports Illustrated and
ESPN magazine as a general sports publication.
"We have always flown under the radar of those publications," Ivory said. "Even with adding football, I don't see us going head-to-head with
Sporting News or any of those other magazines. We're just trying to carve out our own little niche and have some fun."
With a circulation of about 250,000,
Baseball Weekly remains a small player compared to the major weekly sports publications like
SI, which dominates the field with a circulation of 3.2 million, according to the most recent figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
Baseball Weekly operates as part of
USA Today, the largest-circulation daily newspaper in the country and the flagship of Gannett Co., the biggest U.S. newspaper publisher. Unlike
SI and
ESPN, which are both glossy magazines,
Baseball Weekly is published in a tabloid format on newsprint.
Ivory said he does not have plans to add coverage of other sports beyond baseball and football for now, though he noted that the title "gives us some flexibility in years to come."
Taking on football coverage has been under consideration for several years, but Ivory said that the discussions were speeded up due to the looming threat of a players' strike in professional baseball. "We would be remiss in not looking at all the factors," he said.
Picking up football will also dovetail well with baseball's schedule, providing editorial copy in the winter months when baseball isn't being played.
"Hopefully we'll never have an off season again," Ivory said. "When baseball season was over we were always sucking wind to keep things fresh and to keep people buying us."
The changes will go into effect the week of Labor Day, when the NFL season begins.
Comments
No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here