• by Larry Dobrow , September 2, 2003

Chatting with Sporting News vice president and publisher Pete A. Spina, one does not get the impression that he is especially competitive. He graciously compliments other sports titles and - unlike many of his relentlessly Pollyanna-ish peers - acknowledges that there are areas where his publication could improve. But when asked about other mediums that may be siphoning ad dollars away from magazines, he seems to shift into competitive overdrive: "I see a skywriter or a plane tug at the beach, and I think, I could have gotten those dollars. They could have been mine."

Spina punctuates the quip with a sharp laugh, but it's clear from his tone that there are few mediums that he doesn't take seriously as potential challengers. "Times are not the best right now," he continues. "We don't just have to look at the Sports Illustrateds and ESPNs and the Esquires, we have to look at anything with a male skew. There's a cable channel that's calling itself the 'first network for men.' How could I not keep my eye on that?"

Fortunately for Spina, his across-the-board wariness is rooted more in caution than in desperation. At a time when the men's magazine landscape is in flux - even the market-pacing Maxim is rumored to have seen a double-digit ad-page decrease in its September issue - The Sporting News remains a vital property. The title has jumped its circulation from 500,000 in 2001 to its current 700,000, and according to the Publishers Information Bureau it saw 16.7% and 39.1% increases in ad pages and revenue, respectively, in 2002.

The momentum hasn't entirely carried over into 2003: through July, the mag is down 7.6% in ad pages versus the year-ago period. But fueled by its core pro and college football coverage, TSN has notched its three biggest single-revenue issues in August and September (the Aug. 11 college football preview, the Sept. 1 NFL preview and the Sept. 22 issue, which boasts a 12-page Ford/NASCAR insert).

Not surprisingly, Spina credits the TSN editorial mix for spurring the magazine's growth. "If the circulation is up, that must mean that people like what they're reading, right?" he deadpans. "The TSN reader knows exactly what he's going to get every week."

The editorial mix, in fact, is what distinguishes the publication from its sports peers. Unlike Sports Illustrated and ESPN The Magazine, TSN limits its coverage to seven sports: Major League Baseball, pro and college football, pro and college basketball, the National Hockey League and NASCAR. The magazine might cover, say, Phil Mickelson's latest implosion in its expanded "Know It All" section, but for the most part TSN attempts to cling closely to its core strengths.

"We give the meat-and-potatoes of what the passionate sports reader wants," Spina says. And while he praises the expansive coverage of his competitors, it's clear that he has refined his here's-how-we're-different speech. "ESPN is young sports personality journalism. SI does a great job of covering big events, but it's really wide-ranging - it's like a People magazine of sports."

While Spina doesn't need reminding that both titles handily trump TSN in ad revenue, he remains confident that his mag's more refined editorial approach as well as its long-standing ties with readers (TSN turned 117 this year) will eventually lure more big-name companies onto its pages. He also credits the magazine's July 2001 redesign - which included a shift from tabloid-newspaper size to a magazine format and a paper stock upgrade - for increasing the magazine's desirability to potential advertisers. "That's when [advertisers] started to look at us in a different way," he explains, before rattling off a list of marketers that have recently debuted or are about to debut in TSN. "Kellogg's, Old Spice, Pontiac, Century 21, Best Buy - all new this year," he chirps proudly.

As for individual categories, Spina downplays the magazine's success with carmakers. "We have Mazda, Honda, Nissan, Toyota and all the Detroit companies, but let's be honest: If you're a magazine targeted towards men and you don't have auto, that's a real problem." Consumer-electronics retailers (Circuit City, Radio Shack, Best Buy) have come into the book in greater numbers than before, and the mag has also made tentative forays into a handful of new categories. "We broke UPS, so now we can go to Fed Ex," Spina notes. "We have Lowe's, now we can go to a Home Depot. We have Allstate, now we can go to Geico. It's like with anything else - competitors follow one another." Indeed, it's clear that Spina knows a thing or two about pitting opponents against one another: the September 1 TSN contains three pages of ads for ESPN's television properties.

In terms of future growth, Spina believes the recent addition of Miller Beer (for the fourth quarter) is a harbinger of things to come. "The beer industry tends to be TV-first, but there are ways of using magazines to generate more impact," he explains. He's also looking to add CE manufacturers like Sony and Panasonic to the slate of CE retailers already running in the mag.