Heading into 2001, it was looking to be a big year for so-called extreme sports magazines targeted at young men.
    It only seemed logical, at least then. Extreme sports like skateboarding, kayaking and rock climbing—also called action or adventure sports—have been gaining in popularity in recent years. 
   Moreover, with the largest generation of teens ever coming of age, the potential audience is enormous and growing.
    Two publishing powerhouses, Time Inc. and Hearst, had new action-sports projects set to launch this year.
    Meanwhile, ESPN the Magazine, one of the hottest magazine properties of the last few years, was reportedly preparing a test issue of its own extreme spinoff, with regular publication tentatively scheduled to start in October.
    But with the advertising economy running out of steam, publishers that were last year looking for adventure seem now to have lost their stomach for risks.
    As of now, two of the three launches have derailed, getting postponed until this fall or later.
    Only Time Inc.’s Sports Illustrated has moved ahead, launching SI Adventure this week. 
   An insert, SI Adventure will go out to 400,000 Sports Illustrated subscribers who say they participate in three or more outdoor or extreme sports regularly. 
    The median age for this group is 28, compared to 36 for Sports Illustrated, and median household income is $50,000, according to the company, which used existing data, surveys and cover-wrap questionnaires to select recipients.
    The 24-page supplement, which will be included in nine more issues this year, covers sports including mountain biking, windsurfing, rock climbing, marathons, triathlons and skiing.
    This week’s section includes profiles on surfing champion Sunny Garcia and blind mountain climber Erik Weihenmayer, who is currently attempting to scale Mount Everest.
    SI Adventure also includes a story on last week’s Beast of the East adventure race in Virginia and the dominance of Kenyan marathoners.
    Future SI Adventure sections will be released in conjunction with major adventure sporting events,  including the Tour de France in July, the Summer X-Games in August, and the Ironman Triathlon in October.
    Meanwhile, at Hearst, plans to launch R660, a joint venture with youth-sports marketer Rule 660 Communications, have been put on hold until the end of the summer.
    R660, an action sports lifestyle magazine targeted at boys ages 14-20, was supposed to launch last November with an initial circulation of 750,000. However, the project has since been put off and the premiere issue is now scheduled to hit newsstands on Aug. 14 with a scaled-back circulation of 500,000.
     Paul Berger, chief executive officer of Rule 660 Communications, says the company is still committed to the project despite the delay.
   "We still think the market is underserved for Gen Y-ers interested in adventure sports," he says.
     Berger acknowledges that the success of his venture rests heavily on its ability to connect with teenage boys, a notoriously hard-to-reach demographic for magazines.
      But he says the difficulty of marketing magazines to teen boys has been exaggerated.
     "Everyone says teen boys don’t read magazines, but that’s not true. Sure, they don’t like to read long articles. But no one’s really tried to make a magazine for them."
      Berger says the second issue of R660 will be released in late October or early November, and the magazine will begin publishing bimonthly in 2002 if all goes well.
      Hearst is also involved in plans for another action-sports launch: EXPN, a spinoff of ESPN the Magazine, which Hearst publishes in partnership with Disney.
     At the beginning of this year, ESPN announced plans to launch EXPN this fall, following last year’s launch of the EXPN.com web site.
     The plan was to put out a test issue this summer and follow it up with bimonthly issues beginning in October.
      But as the publishing date gets closer it appears the folks at ESPN are having second thoughts. An executive from the company tells Media Life that EXPN is in the development stages, but ESPN has yet to commit to the project.
    "ESPN built what has been traditionally called the action sports-marketplace," he says. "It's very logical we would pursue this."

April 20, 2001 © 2001 Media Life

-Jennifer Cox is a staff writer for Media Life.

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