|
|
in Salt Lake City
SI Women hopes to capitalize on women fans
By Lisa Schneider
That women are big watchers of the Olympics should come as little surprise, considering the amount of camera time given to figure skating and heart-tugging profiles of women athletes.
Less clear is whether their enthusiasm will translate into a wider enthusiasm for women's sports in general, once the Games are over.
It has not in past Olympics, but one who is hoping it will this time around is Susan Casey, the new editor in chief of Sports Illustrated Women.
"The Olympics are a great opportunity for any sports magazine, but especially for women's sports," says Casey, who finds herself these days a much-quoted expert on women and the Olympics, by virtue of her position with the largest title in the women's sports category. "I've been on hundreds of radio and television shows. In one day I did 35 radio interviews."
The trick for SI Women, as well as for Real Sports magazine, which launched in 1998, is to capitalize on women viewers' fascination with the Olympics both to build circulation and to advance the cause of women's athletics generally.
To that end, SI Women published a special Olympics preview issue that included cover lines such as "23 Training Secrets of Sports Champions" and "Body-Loving Workout Wear."
Casey says that it is too early to know how the newsstand sales have fared for the special Olympics issue, which came out in late January, but she says, "It's gotten so much press, exponentially more press than any other issue we've done."
The magazine's editorial will remain in an Olympic afterglow with post-Olympic sum-ups in its next issue, including profiles of recent gold-medalist Kelly Clark and downhill skier Picabo Street.
Casey says future issues will focus more attention on Olympic sports such as the bobsled, skeleton, half pipe, and short-track speed skating.
"We want to tell our readers, have you thought of skeleton? It looks crazy but it's really cool," she says.
"We're also looking at who's going to be the next big star. There's a new wave of women coming up; 16-, 17-, and 18-year-old new faces."
SI Women launched as a bimonthly in March of 2000 with a circulation of 300,000. In 2001 the magazine, whose target audience is women ages 18-49, increased its circulation to 400,000 and its frequency to eight times a year.
"We're still a baby magazine and we're trying to grow it," says Casey, a former creative director at Outdoor Magazine who jumped to SI Women in September.
"Our challenge is to get women to pick up the magazine and read it."
That's no small challenge.
Cleary Simpson, the group publisher for SI Women and SI for Kids, says, "It is still to some extent an emerging marketplace.
"If you look at the fact that the WNBA is only five years old and the women's soccer association is going into its second season, you can see that there's a lot of potential growth in the category. Any magazine like ours has to have the staying power to sustain itself as the interest grows."
One problem, says Simpson, is that women as a rule are more interested in sports as participants than fans, unlike men.
Another is that their interest is fragmented across a wide variety of sports, whether soccer or tennis or running, with little to bind them as a shared audience.
"They do sports and activities, from running to lacrosse to yoga and Pilates. It's challenging to create a product that will reflect all of their interests in a magazine."
While SI Women doesn't fit neatly into any set category, Simpson says its competition consists of magazines such as Shape, Self, and Fitness, as well as special interest magazines such as Runners World and yoga journals.
According to the Publishers Information Bureau, SI Women saw a 26.51 percent increase in ad pages from 2000 to 2001, from 250.43 to 316.82, as well as a 73.28 percent increase in revenue, from $5,499,509 to $9,529,281.
The magazine is sold at newsstands around the country for $3.50.
February 15, 2002 © 2002 Media Life
-Lisa Schneider is a New York writer and a contributor to Media Life.
Printer-Friendly
Version | Send
to a Friend
Cover Page | Contact
Us
