Peer Pitch & Concept Refinement

 Fall 2020 

CATEGORY	DETAILS
Film OR Magazine	Magazine
Genre	Sports
Target Audience (Be specific)	High School Athletes, college recruiters, and coaches
What is your concept? (Be thorough & specific. Review the links on Blackboard)	Our concept is to make a magazine that highlights athletes that are underrated and unknown. Our whole idea is to help these athletes that need to get the attention to go to the next level by attracting scouts for the athletes. There is a lot of D1 talent at schools but just because of where they are located, or the reputation of the school could affect the athlete from getting noticed.
How did you conceive the idea for this concept?	From experience of football and having friends that had the talent to go D1 but just couldn’t get the scouts to our school. I feel it was unfair to them and that this could be a solution to help many other athletes that have similar problems.
What do you believe is unique about your concept?	I haven't seen any other magazine company do something like this. They usually only do College and Pro-Athletes. Rivals do something similar but to be looked at you must be known. Our magazine will help the unknown.
Why do you believe this product will be of interest to your audience?	Because there are a lot of high school athletes grinding to try to be looked at by any D1 college. They would do anything or trying anything to get recognized.
FEEDBACK RECEIVED FROM PEERS	Practicality isn't realistic   Like the concept of it and can do a special issue after every season of the best player  Can put football workouts on the magazine   After football season we can do other sports  Can’t do every 2 weeks

     During our pitch, we received a lot of feedback for our magazine idea. Our idea is to make a magazine that can help underrated athletes who have the talent to make it to the next level but have a hard time getting their name out to the public. 

 From all the feedback I heard, I believe everyone liked our idea. It's very similar to Rivals but Rivals is more of a website. We wanted to release a magazine every two weeks, but the students said the practicality would not be realistic. The students suggested that the concept was great and how we could do a special issue of the best player after every season. Students also suggested that we could put NFL and college football workouts in the magazine to help the athletes. Our magazine is more focused on football but will be doing other sports after football season is over. The revenue from magazines could also help expand our brand. The estimated aggregate revenue of U.S. based periodical publishers has fallen sharply in the past decade from 46 billion U.S. dollars in 2007 to around 28 billion in 2017. the total number of magazine readers in the U.S. has actually seen a slight increase since 2012. The number of magazines in the U.S. has also stayed constant over the years, varying from around 7,383 to 7,218 since 2008.  

A company we look up to is ESPN. ESPN The Magazine, a biweekly sports publication by the ESPN sports network, has the largest reach among all magazines in the United States. Advertisement is also a huge role in getting our brand well known. Magazines remain an important platform for many advertisers. Consumer magazine advertising spending will reach an estimated 15.6 billion U.S. dollars in 2019, placing it in a similar bracket to ad spending for the radio and newspaper industries. Advertising revenue will continue to leak towards platforms such as Google and Facebook. To counter this, magazine publishers will seek to tap into new revenue streams.  

Many magazines have already branched out into events to expose new people to their brand and to foster more loyalty among the existing audience. This also increases the number of touchpoints that magazines have with their readers, which enables them to know the audience even better. Some publishers use their audience knowledge to make their offering more attractive to advertisers, but others such as Pride Media will be offering market research as a standalone service this year, tapping into a different budget of their clients. In a survey of 300 senior decision-makers at US digital media and marketing companies by Lotame, a data management platform, one-third of respondents reported that they’re selling their audience data. “Publishers who choose to sell their data are often driven by one thing: increasing revenues,” says Jason Downie, chief strategy officer at Lotame. 

The magazine industry can be very successful if done correctly. I believe our magazine idea could potentially take off and be very successful.