For decades, The Sporting News (the weekly magazine, not the website) used to be the pillar of sports information, from news and insights, to scores and stats. But TSN has slowly realized that what they provide weekly in a magazine is already available daily on hundreds of sports sites on the web.
That’s why TSN has decided to go with Sporting News Today, which is a digit daily (an e-mail basically) complete with news, scores, stats and more.
The new business model is a mix as well: the digital daily will be free while the magazine, which will be reintroduced in September with an emphasis on analysis and commentary, remains $3.99 an issue. The magazine circulation is about 700,000.
As the NYT explains, it’s a kind of “back to the future” move: take what the magazine was once known for—being the weekly sports Bible—and try to make it that kind of relevant in 2008 by providing a full morning briefing for “serious sports fans.” In today’s instant news world, can that work? Not in lieu of immediate gratification but as a way of providing a coherent picture the reader doesn’t have to piece together on his or her own, it just might.
This is a logical and smart business move. Obviously nobody wants to wait a week for information that they can get on a daily basis. So by sending a daily e-mail and making it free, TSN will get people to view their content instead going to ESPN.com or any other website to get their sports information. (Or at least, that’s what the idea is in theory.)
At least at the start, it’s a wise move for TSN to make this digit daily free. People have a short attention span as it is. If you want to charge for something that people can already get free elsewhere, their attention span gets even shorter.
