NFL Magazine Folds After Just One Quarter!
NFL Magazine, which began publishing in December, has folded up after just four issues, according to the Toronto Star!
Mike Dunphy, head of Dauphin Media Group which published NFL Magazine, explained: “We were just too small,” and said the company lacked the necessary capital and support for such a large venture.
The NFL also released a statement about the sudden cessation:
“The NFL has ended its business relationship with Dauphin Media Group, publisher of the NFL Magazine. The . . . April issue will be the final issue subscribers will receive. . . . The NFL will make sure that fans who subscribed to the NFL Magazine are refunded for any future issues that they will not receive.”
Apparently, the company has recently done something else just like this — in December they abruptly halted publishing Holmes, The Magazine to Make It Right, and there are around 40,000 people who are owed a cumulative sum of $500,000 in prepaid subscriptions.
Based on the timing, I’d conjecture that perhaps the abrupt shutdown of the Holmes magazine might have messed the company up to where they could not properly run the NFL Magazine.
However, even in this era of traditional print media struggles, it’s hard to imagine an National Football League magazine being unable to make it. I think many print publishing companies would give their eye-teeth to be able to publish the NFL’s magazine, and surely one would do nearly anything necessary to make the project operational — particularly right after losing the other magazine product!
So, unfortunately I’d have to conclude that there must have been very, very bad management decisions involved in this spectacular magazine failure.
I’m not sure yet whether I’ll add NFL Magazine to the Magazine Graveyard or not — I expect the NFL will find some other partner once the dust has settled.
One Comments