UAE-based publishing firm is to launch an English language sports newspaper later this year, it was reported on Sunday.
Sport 360 will be based in Abu Dhabi, will be published seven days a week, will have a minimum of 40 pages and will be in a format slightly bigger than a tabloid, according to a report in the Gulf Times daily newspaper.
"Market research showed that there is a huge gap in the market in the region for the sports enthusiast. People are looking to read about sports that the daily newspapers here do not cover well in terms of quantity and quality," Michael Chalhoub, chief executive of Gulf Sports Media, the newspaper's parent company, said in the report.
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37 comments:
Maybe there is a "gap in the market" for a reason. No self-respecting Middle-East-brought-up football fan here wants to keep track of EVERY sport, including golf and cycling-in-tights. And vice versa, maybe.
didn't Gulf News do that already?
why no thread or discussion about the banning of blackberry services in UAE from october ?
A gap in the market doesn't simply mean that a product doesn't exist but that there is latent demand for that product. In fact, that demand is the market. Sports news and updates are available everywhere, all the time - online, via mobiles and smartphones, in every newspaper, televison, radio.
Don't do it!
I agree... What's everyone's take on the uae's errrmmm 'Security Issues' over Blackberry?
This has been tried before when the market was booming (Sport 100) and it didn't work. Publishing a daily newspaper is horrendously expensive and a sports paper is simply too niche to turn a profit in such a small market, particularly one where ad spends have been massacred. Chaloub doubtless has deep pockets, but in the end it will simply be a question of how long he's prepared to bankroll it before it gets dropped.
Money could be an issue for anyone thinking of joining the paper. One guy I know was verbally offered a job for "close to" AED20,000 a month and then told three days later that the salary would actually be AED16,000. If they're willing to break promises from the very beginning, then it doesn't bode well for the future.
Nice idea but, unfortunately, it won't work. It will eventually turn into a monthly and then disappear.
GN, KT and The Notional all have their own dedicated sections that struggle to fill with any meaningful sport each day. (I know, I've been trying to do it).
The only dedicated sports paper in the UK is Racing Post which only succeeds because of of betting information and advertising. I'm sure Sheikh Mo is a keen reader but can't see it catching on here yet!
The reason such ventures (and there have been many) have failed, especially in the UK, is that the nationals have the resources to throw at it and cover it in minute detail too while giving readers plenty else beside.
Still. All the best of luck to them and good on them for trying...
It will work.
Guys...give them a chance! I am sure it will work if they do it properly. There are enough sports fans in the UAE to sustain something like this. Even Google was written off in its initial days!!
It will absolutely work! As a serios sports fan and considering the range of products they are offering I cannot wait for it's launch...check out the BBC interview... Already getting a lot of attention in the media.... Ps. Please get me the name of your friend who got offered a job!! I have a friend that's really interested in working there....How did he get the interview????? I hear they are not even taking new cvs!
Yes, a daily sports paper is an idea along the same lines as Google.
Never Work. No chance. Will not live. Stupid. Give them 18 months. Dead.
ok, so you have the national, 7days and the gang covering sports and other stuff. or you have a paper just covering sports. which do you pick up. and, if you are an advertiser other than a sports brand, where do you advertise?
It’s being bankrolled by the Challoub group, and the word is, they have sunk enough money into the paper to survive for a year, even if they don’t get a single advert in the first 12 months.
The problem is, people no longer go to newspapers to get sports results – they can get them on the internet, either via a PC or on their phone. The thing they need to do is ensure they are far, far more than just a results service.
Good columnists, bigger features and in-depth analysis is what they need to stand out and get people picking the paper up. So rather than getting basic quotes or columns from football pundits like Rob McCaffrey, instead get some tactical and in-depth stuff from people like Jonathan Wilson.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/jonathanwilson
If it ends up being an expanded version of the current sport pages in the existing daily newspapers over here I can’t see many people reading it.
The problem now is the trend for all these small start-ups. Dubai, Fujairaih and RAK all have free zones with cheap start-up costs. The problem is that these companies are hard to govern. I did some online work for one such company (based in a shared office in Jumairaih but registered in RAK which was probably a bad signal) and have been chasing money for two months. They are no longer at that office. So how do you track them down I do not know.
wilson already writes for the national
Has anyone heard of a liquor magazine in dubai? Something very schoolish..
Sports newspapers have been launched and failed in countries with far bigger populations, far more sports addicts and a captive commuter-based potential readership in the millions. So you think it will work here in a country of five million, 162 different nationalities, upteen different languages and vastly different sports agendas. Course it will...
Really? I never knew that Wilson wrote for the National. Original content or just re-running stuff that's been in the Guardian?
Because I can - and do - read the Guardian stuff online for free.
But if he's writing original work for The National then I'll pick it up.
re wilson - it's original stuff
He's was a regular for over a year, but he hasn't done anything since World Cup
if u search site, there are some nice pieces by him
http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100628/SPORT/706279852&SearchID=73400561354251
thanks for the pointer, mr wilson
Sport 100 showed it wouldn't work - that was a good product bought in for low costs from the PA in England so didn't need much revenue to break even and still didn't make it. That despite being better at covering sport than any of the papers here at the time.
Factor in the additional costs of hiring staff, probably taking on agencies, then how on earth do they expect to make it work?
A daily sports newspaper for the region is a no brainer in that whoever suggested it has no brain!
As has been said here, sports fans can go online for all the information they want about their niche or mainstream sports.
The Media Factory tried to publish FourFourTwo under license from Haymarket a while back and even a football magazine received no interest from readers or advertisers.
TMF also publishes Haymarket's Autocar, but at a significant loss.
Niche titles, and particularly men's interest titles, have proved to be risky investments in the UAE.
They made a real mess of FourFourTwo. It was like the original had been purged of any decent content or design. Terrible. And hardly distributed either. Game On was similar.
There is a real passion for sport over here - but no product ably delivering.
I've seen this liquor magazine. It is printed in Dubai by a company I've never heard of, on behalf of MMI. It's called Sample Malt. I started to read it out of curiousity - but it was pretty boring and badly written.
I've seen Sample Malt and it's a typically bad 'in house' corporate product. Low resolution pictures, badly written. It shouws why magazines should be left to publishers. Apart from TMF of course.
Is this a made-up DMO rumour? Are you seriously telling me there is a 'beverage' magazine on sale in Dubai?
It may be godawful, but if MMI are producing their own magazine, then there will be no need to sponsor events any more to place advertisments. Goodbye concerts in the UAE.
"Single" Malt Monthly was an alcohol magazine and the first to carry alcohol-driven content in the country. It was closed down. There are two magazines in the UAE currently testing the water with alcohol advertising. I don't expect either to last long - I'm a 'foreigner at Tecom but I have heard colleagues suggest that they would rather have a failing publishing industry than let sex - drugs - smoking - alcohol advertising prop it up.
Who are the two magazines experimenting with drinks ads?
I sold some space in my magazine to a drinks company on the understanding that the onus would be on me to get it passed by DMC. I asked. They said no and said that if I ran it my magazine would be removed from the shelves. So I very much doubt these two magazines have been given a licence.
Now that would make a great feature in Media Weekly or whatever they call themselves nowadays. Why don't these guys chase quotes? What is the government stance on these booze-led titles?
You cannot advertise alcohol in magazines in Dubai. Fact. If there are magazines over here running alcohol advertising, I would suggest they are imports such as FHM and Esquire, which frequently run alcohol adverts and are sold as imports.
Having never seen a drink advert in any UAE title, I would suggest that these magazines either do not exist or are so poorly distributed that they are flying under the radar.
Like any business, I am sure they've done their bit of research before making this huge investment. And give credit to the guy. The group has deep pockets because of their own business decisions which have proved to be successful. A niche daily can only be successful if they've identified a gap and are absolutely sure of their approach and can market and sell the hell out of their USP's.
A company succeeds because of it people. It all boils down to them. If they've got the right people, and if they know how to respect and keep their people happy, these people will carry the company to success.
I picked up my first copy of Sport 360 today. The cover price of Dh2 was invalidated somewhat by a free stack of papers in the reception of my building.
I must say the advert in this week's Communicate was a little droll "Finally, a paper with balls" - with an illustration of cricket balls, footballs etc.
The paper is large, with some 39 pages of what looks like wire copy rewritten by a local team.
And despite the size of the paper, the team is small. I mean seriously small.
I counted only 10 bylines, and remember, that is for almost 40 pages, with sometimes three stories per page.
The result was that one reporter, a Neil Cameron (for it is he), had his byline 12 stories - including a feature interview.
Almost every page that I turned, I found a byline from the young Cameron, so prolific was he.
The other reporters had only slightly less, with a paltry seven bylines on average each.
I have no idea what drugs the bosses there are pumping into their writers, but I fancy some of it.
That said, I sincerely hope for the sake of messers Cameron and co that the paper is still hiring reporters.
It's been delivered to my door for the last week and I'm impressed. Congratulations to the "small team" (doesn't bother me how many people put it together). There's quite a lot of local coverage too so as much as the international stories may be rewritten wire copy (so what?) there is some original stuff. Also a lot of colour and graphics, lots of pics. Nice job. That said, there's barely an ad in sight and I still have doubts about the revenue potential. I hope they make it work though, I'd be happy to read it as long as it's around. Good luck to them.
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