Sport magazine still the UK's largest

From a press release to news@media.info
Posted 14 August 2014, 10.02am edt

Sport, the weekly free magazine published by UTV Media (GB), has retained its position as the country’s biggest dedicated sports magazine according to official industry figures released today (14 August) by the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

For the period January – June 2014 Sport recorded a circulation of 304,160 making it by far the biggest sports magazine in the country.

The publication attracts the most famous names in sport. This week’s edition, out tomorrow (Friday 15 August), features an exclusive interview with Arsenal’s Olivier Giroud, ahead of the start of the new Barclays Premier League season on Saturday, while the following week’s cover star is the legendary Usain Bolt. Other notable recent interviewees include Jose Mourinho, Ian Poulter and Tom Daley and the magazine’s premium brand advertisers include Apple, Microsoft and Porsche.

Simon Caney, Publisher, Sport magazine, said: “The latest ABC figures again demonstrate the power and reach of free magazines that has been evident ever since Sport revolutionised the marketplace when it launched in 2006. At Sport we pride ourselves not just on the scale of the audience but also its quality – finding those male ABC1 readers is increasingly difficult in print but we have more than 300,000 of them who are passionate and engaged about our content.

We also have 20,000 weekly readers of our iPad issue, which is a continued area of focus for us as we look towards 2015, and we are currently refreshing our app to make it more user-friendly as well as being able to support more ad formats.

It’s undoubtedly a tough time for magazines but Sport continues to buck the trend.”

Sport was the first mass distribution free magazine in the UK market when it launched in 2006, and attracts a predominantly male ABC1 readership. The magazine is distributed by hand on Thursday evenings and Friday mornings at mainline and underground stations within London, as well as nationwide at gyms and sports clubs, major corporations, hotels, universities, in airports, on selected airlines and first class train carriages.

Sport is also available to download for free for iPad, Kindle Fire and Android devices.