Name: Greg Miall
Nationality: British
Age: 34
Job title: Managing director, Sport magazine
Sport is a free weekly magazine, which launched in September 2006. It is distributed every Friday at tube stations around London and at health clubs and gyms up and down the country.
Birth of the idea The magazine has its origins in France, where Sport was launched in March 2004. At the time Miall was working in Paris for Metro International, the company behind the free Metro newspapers distributed in over 100 cities worldwide (except in the UK, where, somewhat confusingly, Associated Newspapers publishes them).
He monitored the magazine closely, and realised that the model was working. "When I heard that the company was planning to launch a UK version I contacted the CEO and persuaded him to let me run it," Greg recalls. "Having worked in France, I knew the difference between the French and UK markets, what would be transferable and what wouldn't be."
So Greg and his team took the product and adjusted it for the UK market.
"We changed a lot of the content, we changed the way the distribution was done, we changed the type of people we recruited - we created a brand new model. And it worked. I suppose I thought, 'If this idea can work in France, then it can definitely work in the UK.' But we could have messed it up completely, because my costs now are almost exactly the same as they were in week one - but I've got a lot more revenue coming in now. My revenue could have remained at practically zero for say 10 weeks, while people [in the advertising industry] were saying 'this is nice, I wonder if I should put ads in the future' - that could have quite quickly bankrupted it."
Growth of the company
The magazine launched with just three adverts, even though the company was offering a two-for-one deal to advertisers. But by the sixth issue Greg's team had nine adverts in place and the revenue built up quite quickly.
"We were lucky in that a couple of big [advertisers] had launched sports-based campaigns around the time we set up, and their managing directors read the magazine, liked what they saw and phoned up their agencies and said, 'We should be advertising in this.' It really helps that the media buyers actually like the product."
And then, six months in, Sport managed to secure an interview with Wayne Rooney and the profile of the magazine shot up. "Rooney just doesn't do interviews. We had spent six months trying to get one. We managed to get him through his sponsor Electronic Arts and did it in a way that we didn't make a sacrifice editorially. And now the pressure is on [to maintain those standards]. But hey, if it was easy, people would have done it before."
Finding a gap in the market
One reason the magazine has become so successful is that it targets a hard-to-reach demographic, those time-poor, cash-rich white collar workers who in the main don't read men's magazines. "We carry a lot of the same ads that run in FHM or Men's Health, but I'm getting city bankers and lawyers who wouldn't read those publications ... This is a magazine about sport, it's well done, it's amusingly written, it's delivered to your hand, and it's free. We're reaching those readers that advertisers are desperate to attract."
So what does innovation mean to Greg? "Innovation is about looking at things in a different way and seeing a gap in the market ... Often it is not a lot more complex than that. For years people have been saying, 'Why don't we have a sports newspaper?' The French, Italians and Spanish all do, and the Brits are mad on sport. But I think the sports sections of the dailies are so good, it just wouldn't work. Until we came along, sports magazines were usually monthlies, which makes them very odd titles because they are out of date by the time they are printed. We are successful because as a weekly we can be much more responsive."
The future
Although a lot of people are turning to the internet to make money, Greg still thinks there is a strong future in print publications. "We set ourselves the goal of becoming profitable in three years. Nineteen months in and we are well on our way to achieving this. People enjoy reading. Having something in your hand is different to reading on the screen. One of the things we have noticed is that you don't see a lot of our magazines lying around. That is because people are putting them in their bags and taking them to read at home over the weekend - that has to be a good thing."
