ESPN, the magazine (1998-2019)

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Photos by Retiring Guy

End of the Line (in Print, Anyway) for ESPN: The Magazine.  (The New York Times, 4/30/2019)

ESPN is ending the print run of its eponymous magazine, a lush, large periodical that the sports media giant started more than two decades ago and is killing now because it is losing money. The company said “the vast majority” of the magazine’s readers now consume its journalism digitally rather than through the print version

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Related reading:
ESPN the Magazine Dead; Sports Illustrated Dying.  (Outside the Beltway, 4/30/2019)

Over time, the two became indistinguishable and, frankly, often went unread. It wasn’t obvious why I needed a weekly print sports magazine in the age of the Internet. Indeed, they seemed to rely too much on non-sports gimmicks like the infamous SI swimsuit issue and ESPN’s Body Issue knock-off.

Both, it appears, are going the way of the dodo bird.

THE MEDIA BUSINESS: ADVERTISING; Sports magazines are stepping up branding and promotion efforts.  (The New York Times, 3/2/1998)

THE Winter Olympics may finally be over, but the competition is still under way in the crowded field of sports magazines. 

In fact, the activity in the category is intensifying as the Walt Disney Company prepares an entry named after its popular ESPN cable television network. That magazine, scheduled to be introduced next week, has inspired those already in the field to try taking their game, as the saying goes, to the next level. 

Two mainstays of the field -- Sports Illustrated, published by the Time Inc. division of Time Warner Inc., and Sport, part of the Petersen Publishing Company -- have already been redesigned in anticipation of the challenge from ESPN. A third magazine, Inside Sports, owned by the Century Publishing Company, has made some editorial changes and increased its frequency.

As for those mainstays, Inside Sports merged with Sport magazine after its June 1998 sale to Petersen Publishing.  Sport then went belly up in August 2000.  

Another mainstay not mentioned here, The Sporting News published its final print edition in December 2012, ending a 126-year run.