Owner Sport Newspapers is looking to find a new audience for the two downmarket Manchester-based titles, renowned for salacious stories, female nudity and revelations about Second World War bombers being found on the moon, London double-decker buses being found frozen in Antarctic ice and Lord Lucan being spotted riding Shergar.
The new look will feature a redesigned cover and news layouts, and extended football coverage, with the aim of partially imitating weekly lads’ mags Zoo and Nuts. Columnists and writers will include sports stars such as football personalities Peter Reid and Dean Windass, and boxer Ricky Hatton.
The Sunday Sport has dropped from selling more than 200,000 copies in 2000 to around 85,000 in December last year. The Daily Sport has seen a similar fall in sales and registered its first ABC in January this year of 101,653.
From 3 March, adult advertising will run in a separate supplement or be confined to the back of the paper. New advertising will be targeted in the telecoms, gambling and sports brand sectors, along with increased advertising from current advertisers, including Ladbrokes and Setanta.
The advertising strategy will be driven by the papers’ London-based sales house, Wardour Publishing and Design, which was appointed last month.
McIlheney, the former managing director of Emap Metro, the men’s division that published FHM, is editor-in-chief of the two titles. He has been working with former Loaded editor Brown on the redesign.
The new-look Daily Sport will be published in April and subsequently rolled out across sister title the Sunday Sport.
The Daily Sport’s cover price of 55p and the Sunday Sport’s 65p will remain for now, but McIlheney said a reduction is “something they will look at”. He added, however, that launching a free title is not currently on the agenda.
Sport Media Group chief executive Andrew Fickling said: “A primary objective is to make the titles more appealing to mainstream advertisers looking to reach a very broad male population.
“We know our current core readership is 18 to 45-year-olds with high disposable cash income.”
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