• by Frank Saxe , March 3, 2003

As the tennis industry continues to fight its way through a slump in consumer interest and sales, the largest circulation tennis title is looking at ways to improve its game. Miller Sports Group’s Tennis Magazine is using promotional events to bring in advertising dollars, at the same time it is going after brands that would not typically be found in a sports publication.

“The sporting goods market has been soft in the last few years, so it naturally puts a certain amount of pressure on our category just by weakness of the whole category,” says publisher Jeff Williams.

Miller Sports Group president Jack Laschever says that has forced a philosophical shift for the magazine. “With our business not as strong as it has been, we went to our existing clients and said if they keep their business with us or they increase it, we’re going to create all sorts of other things besides just ad pages in the magazine. That has helped us in a very tough time in the tennis industry increase our commitment and advertising from them, whether it’s existing advertisers or attracting those who have not been with us before.”

One such promotion is the Tennis Magazine Grand Slam, which will be held for the second year on August 22 outside the Grand Central Terminal in New York, just before the start of the US Open in nearby Flushing Meadows. The one-day tennis festival not only attracted 250,000 commuters, but also sponsorships from American Express, Fuji Film, Lincoln, Invest Bio, Clarinex, and Nature Valley Granola Bar. Two sponsors have already returned for this year’s event, Invest Bio and Clarinex, and a bottled water company is apparently close to signing on as well. Also this summer, Tennis is looking to create a Wimbledon watching venue in Grand Central, featuring several large screen TVs. They are currently pitching potential sponsors, including airlines and automobile manufacturers.

“Part of what we are doing is trying to expand our coverage of non-endemic accounts and bring the Tennis story to them. In the past we’ve said we have this incredible audience of tennis players. Our pitch has changed somewhat, which is we deliver this enormously passionate group of people who are affluent, athletic, and health conscious,” says Laschever.

That effort is also carrying over to the magazine itself. While Tennis still gets about 45% of its advertising dollars from tennis-related accounts, the list of non-tennis brands inside the book has been growing. Among new accounts it has broken are TD Waterhouse, Wheat Thins, Balance Bar, Tanqueray and Nissan, which has doubled its business for 2003. “It’s fishing where the fish are,” says Laschever. “The advertising market has been tough over the last couple of years, so we’ve always viewed those categories as potential opportunities for us. Although we view the tennis category as a sustained opportunity, there is huge untapped opportunity with non-tennis advertisers.” It may have little choice since ad pages declined 10% last year.

While advertising is soft, circulation remains steady for the 700,000 rate base Tennis, which typically sells about 35,000 copies on newsstand. “Over the last year, every newsstand issue did better than the previous year by 20 to 40%,” says Williams. A potential driver of new readers has been an annual 16 page Tennis-branded standalone that is distributed at four major sporting goods stores each spring, including Galleons, Gart’s Sports, Sports Authority and Dick’s Sporting Goods. “If somebody’s new coming into the game and picks one of these up at sports authority, they get a look at Tennis Magazine,” says Williams, who says it can also help open ad budgets further. “Adidas, New Balance, K-Swiss, we’ve had increased spending because of some of the programs that we’re doing. It’s not necessarily new advertising, but they have increased the spending because of the commitment that we’re making in their business as well.”

The almost booster-like quality of the tennis industry should come as little surprise, considering the recent history of Miller Sports Group. Within the past year it has sold its only other titles, Sailing World and Cruising World, as it focuses entirely on Tennis. “Our growth in the future is more likely to come from acquisitions than it is from offshoots,” says Laschever, who says that won’t be anytime soon. “Our real focus at this point is shoring up advertising.”