The concept has actually been around a few years, but of late it has gotten legs, recently arriving in London under the name Sport. If it catches on in London as it has in French cities, Sport will launch in other British markets. Then perhaps other countries.

“We’ve got to get the UK right first,” cautions Greg Miall, publishing director at Sport in London. 

The London Sport, launched in September, is distributing just over 319,000 copies around city streets on Friday mornings. The first Sport launched three years ago in Paris before rolling out in 10 other larger French cities. Executives say the publication is now profitable, and soon it will roll out to 47 more cities having populations over 100,000. The goal is to distribute a million copies a week in France, up from 550,000 now.

The London edition runs features and news on sports from snowboarding to cricket and boxing and targets upmarket 18- to 45-year-olds. Miall says 91 percent of Sport’s audience is white-collar professionals, and 86 percent are men.

And while it's still early, media folks are impressed. 

“It’s doing really well. It’s a beautiful-looking magazine for a freebie,” says Mark Gallagher, press director at Manning Gottlieb OMD. Gallagher's one beef: He feels the ad pages are overpriced.

“I think generally most men think that it is worth looking at,” says Alex Randall, head of press at Vizeum. “I know that it is successful in France. As long as there is sufficient budget they could do well here.” 

In Sport, Miall sees an opportunity to fill a niche he believes was not served before, as a men’s mass circulation, upmarket magazine. “There is a huge gap in the market in the UK,” says Miall. While there were upscale men's lifestyle monthlies, none had mass audiences, and there was no mass-circulation general-interest sports magazine.

The question is whether that niche was and is already being served by the quality daily newspapers in their extensive sports coverage.  Media people think it is.

“Most upmarket men that are interested in sports are going to a newspaper on a weekend to read the sports section. What Sport is effectively doing is offering it to them in a magazine format a day early,” says Randall. But he points out that people lead busy lives on Friday, so there could be issues over finding time to read the magazine. 

Miall acknowledges the strong newspaper sports sections, but points out that magazines are different in what they cover and how they cover it.

Magazines also offer advertisers a different environment. According to Miall, advertising sales are going well, with 14.5 pages of ads in the most recent issue, which is basically full. “To be full after 11 issues is extraordinary,” he says. The hope is, he says, that the magazine could be profitable within roughly three years in Britain, as it was in France.