Magazine
Football Punk
Owner
JF Media
What's happened?
Magazine has launched
Football Punk's safety pin piercing on the front cover, sub-heading of "The Beautiful Game with Attitude" and irreverent tone serve to support this idea.
Yet, at the same time, football is the most mainstream and popular of sports and you might wonder how a new title from a relatively small publisher can hope to break into a market dominated by national press journalists and [Media Week owner] Haymarket's well-established FourFourTwo?
Its most potent weapon is the substantial contacts book of owner and editor-at-large, Phil Babb, the former Liverpool player. In the launch issue, he has secured interviews with Steven Gerrard (his old team-mate, who he interviews personally), Nicolas Anelka and Robbie Savage.
The Gerrard interview goes well beyond the typical TV comments delivered by players of letting his football do the talking and provides some insight and humour into the footballer's personality.
The editorial is, in general, intelligent and well written.
There are a few launch issue gremlins; the layout is cluttered in places and the sections less well defined than the clean-cut FourFourTwo.These are things that should be ironed out easily enough.
Commercially, it's a tough time for any new title to launch and ensuring sustained investment on the part of both the publisher and advertisers will be a major challenge.
With an initial print run of 50,000, it clearly won't be challenging Four-FourTwo's dominance for some time.
However, with a launch price of £2 (less than half that of its market rival), cash-strapped fans may be willing to give it a try, especially if Babb can keep the big cover stars coming.
What is good?
Innovative launch into an established market.
What could be better?
The magazine layout and the website, which does not seem to be up and running.
Would I book my clients into this?
For the right clients, yes.
Olly Ruff, Senior buyer, MediaCom