How much longer will boxing magazines last?

[Ade L]

How much longer will boxing magazines last?

I love boxing magazines & collect old copies of "The Ring", "KO", "Bert Sugars Fight Game" etc. and would hate to see Boxing News / Boxing Monthly / The Ring etc. (all of which I still buy. cease publication...but in this digital age is there a place for magazines?

[Noxy]

I think so, Boxing Monthly goes into more depth than the digital media. I hope it has a future.

[Rexob]

Surprised it's still going tbf.

[BitPlayer]

As long as they can make money online, they can probably do atleast fairly limited physical mags.

[Controversial]

I think sales will gradually drop, more people are going the digital route, just easier and cheaper although I prefer to hold a magazine than read one online.

[dalcumly]

I've touched on this before and being the age I am, hope sincerely that the magazines continue. When doing research in the past I was able to learn that in the 1950's the Boxing News sold 250,000 copies a week in the UK. It was also estimated that on average around 4 people read the magazine so probably there were 1 million readers each week.
I understand that the Boxing News now sells around 10,000 copies a week. On previous occasions 'experts' in the media on this website have forcefully suggested that normal newspapers and printed magazines are rapidly dying and there is no future in general for them. As the printed newspaper readers die out, and younger people get older without the habit of reading printed material. effectively. they'll cease to exist. I see the logic but don't agree. My opinion comes from the demise of kindles and resurgence of printed books and the re-opening of booksellers on the High Street.
Sadly for me the Boxing Monthly is collapsing. I don't know if sales reflect this, but having bought every magazine since it started in 1989 I haven't read one for 6 months. I feel sorry for everyone involved, and I like the editor who does his job from America, but the articles just became of no interest to me whatsoever being as they seemed to focus on boxers from America and elsewhere who weren't even well known in their own street!! Basically it lost its audience.
I suspect the Boxing Monthly is within 6 months of going under. Big shame.

[montrealsuper]

I remember in the late 70s there were about five or six boxing magazines printed in America. Ring, Boxing Illustrated, Boxing Digest, KO, World Boxing and a couple of other I can't even remember the titles though I have them in storage. It was all because of Ali. Boxing was so popular and interesting back then. Tyson also was a huge boom for the sport. The internet has taken a lot of magazine sales because there are so many free web sites with very good content. But a lot of this internet info will disappear and history will not have physical archives to research unless modern historians archive the best content on the internet.

[SenorPipino]

I haven't found Ring magazine in any store for about 6 months.

Boxing is such a niche sport in this era that printed magazines must be wholly unprofitable.

I miss all those terrific magazines that montrealsuper listed.

I think print boxing magazines lost an enormous amount of circulation with the end of the dominant Tyson era around the early 2000s.

In the U.S., boxing fanatics are now mostly Latino and not prone to purchasing English language periodicals about the sport.

I assume that within a decade, print boxing magazines will have vanished.

But I'll always have my stacks of them, boxed in the garage, which I began collecting in the 60s when I was drawn to the sport by the charismatic local Mando Ramos.

[Kalan]

Maybe 100 years more -- to a time when digital dissemination is so advanced, easily accessed, and mobile that nobody will be reading anything on paper. For the next 10,000 years after that libraries will be a relic and even printers will disappear. You'll have everything at your fingertips.

When I was a grade school kid we used to sell magazine subscriptions door to door. We would rake in all kinds of prizes and money. Ring Magazine was never popular or widely read enough to be one of the offerings. But you would also see magazine racks everywhere and you often would see Boxing Illustrated and Ring Magazine among the offerings. Everybody would be reading newspapers and magazines everywhere you went. When you traveled there would be stacks of discarded newspapers and magazines at every terminal.

I still see magazine racks but almost never any boxing magazines. Sports Illustrated doesn’t do as many Boxing stories anymore. Nowadays everyone gets their news online... People don’t have the patience to listen to a TV sportscast to find out who won a boxing match. I suppose in the UK it’s different, but in the US these days everyday people you meet rarely know who the World Champion boxers are – much less follow the sport

[nickcat0]

I haven't found Ring magazine in any store for about 6 months.

Boxing is such a niche sport in this era that printed magazines must be wholly unprofitable.

....................

I bought one in my local W.H.Smith newsagents about an hour ago.

[gilgamesh]

Hopefully as long as the sport itself. Lots of the good things from the past have gone away though, but I'd like to see Boxing Mags keep on keeping on for as long as they can.