Sports Illustrated and ESPN the Magazine are about to have a new competitor, or at least sort of a new competitor.
 As Major League Baseball limps to a seemingly inevitable strike, USA Today’s Baseball Weekly, the sport's  unofficial publication of record, is undergoing a revamp that will have it expanding its coverage to include pro football.
  Beginning Sept. 4 it will be known as Sports Weekly. 
   “It’s something we’ve toyed with for a few years,” says Lee Ivory, publisher and executive editor of Baseball Weekly.
    “We love baseball but one of the downsides to covering it year round is that when the off-season hits, our single-copy sales go down. By adding the NFL, we never have an off-season again.”
   That this decision comes during a baseball labor dispute is no coincidence. The paper, founded 11 years ago, understandably doesn‘t want to relive what happened eight years ago.
   “All of us were here during the 1994 strike, and it was not a pretty picture,” says Ivory. “If I told you that the specter of the strike had nothing to do with this decision, that wouldn’t be true. But it was not the determining factor.”
   Sports Weekly, at a circulation of 250,000 won't be posing much of a threat to Sports Illustrated, with a circulation of 3.2 million, or ESPN, at 1.4 million, at least for the time being.
   Yet Ivory appears to enjoy playing the role of the underdog manager leading his team against the heavy favorites.
   “I don’t consider them our competition,” he says. “They’re the big guys and they’ve been doing this for a number of years. We’re just trying to fly under the radar.” Although Ivory may not see the others as competition, that doesn’t mean the feeling is mutual.
  “They’re a sports publication now,” says Stuart Marvin, vice president of marketing for Sporting News. “And because there are only so many eyeballs out there, any sports information provider is a competitor to us.”
   With the distribution and marketing strength they’ll get from Gannett and USA Today, the new Sports Weekly can be cross-promoted on friendly TV, print and radio operations.
    “We have a great distribution system and we will try and use that to our advantage,” Ivory says. Ivory hopes to move the born-again publication’s circulation up from its current 250,000 to at least 300,000 by the end of this year.
   The new rivals also may have to worry about more than the threat of Sports Weekly poaching their readers, and hold on to some of their writers. As the weekly does not have any football writers, Ivory is going to have to go out and draft some talent.
   “We’d love to get some marquee people,” he says. “We’ve got our net cast, but it’s a little premature to be dropping names.
   While the move may threaten some publications, it could prove to be a boon for others.
   “In some ways it is good for us,” says Lee Folger, publisher of Baseball America. “In others it conveys questions about what’s happening in baseball. I think they’re hedging here.” 
   Despite the labor dispute in the Major League, Folger says he has no plans to follow Baseball Weekly’s foray into other sports.

July 29, 2002© 2002 Media Life

-Michael Katz is a New York writer.

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