Williams: “There is too much choice in the men’s magazine market”

Carat’s press director Dominic Williams is convinced that there is “too much choice” in the men’s magazine market and predicts more closures in 2009.

Speaking at MediaTel Group’s ‘Future of Consumer Magazine’ seminar on Wednesday, Williams said: “There is too much choice. It’s a much tougher market now and there will definitely be more closures in 2009.”

For starters, Williams doubts the future of Dennis Publishing’s Maxim magazine – which suffered a significant 41.5% year on year decline in the last ABC release (see ABC Results Jul-Dec 2008:Shortlist shows staying power in men’s lifestyle sector).

He also mentioned the closure of Bauer Media’s men’s title Arena, which announced plans to cease printing after 22 years earlier this month.

Despite reporting a 16.5% year on year circulation increase in the last ABCs – for July to December 2008 – Arena‘s total figure was down to under 30,000 copies (see The rise and fall of Arena).

However, Arena was not the only title to have performed badly – the men’s lifestyle market as a whole has been looking fairly gloomy over the past few years, with ABC figures showing big declines for some major players.

FHM and Maxim in particular have suffered in recent times, with FHM‘s current circulation of 243,299 a big drop from the 550,101 of four years ago, while Maxim has fallen from 208,140 to just 41,148 over the same time-frame.

The rise of digital and the on-going recession are undoubtedly two contributing factors to the struggles of the men’s magazine market, however, IPC’s chief Evelyn Webster believes it’s just about change.

“There is still a huge interest in men’s lifestyle titles,” she said. “It’s just changed from monthly to weekly and from print to online.”

Webster confirmed that Loaded will not be closing.

Greg Miall, managing director of Sport Magazine – which is performing relatively well after a 1.5% period on period increase to more than 317,000 copies – added: “It’s not the best market at the moment and profits have gone down during the recession but our vision is to make Sport better and cheaper.”