Game Is Over for Sport Magazine After 54 Years

Sport, a monthly magazine founded in June 1946 and owned by British company Emap’s Los Angeles-based Petersen Publishing division, is closing down after publication of its August issue, in part because it lost advertising revenue from tobacco maker Philip Morris Cos., executives said.

Separately, Conde Nast Publications Inc. said Tuesday that it will shutter Women’s Sports & Fitness, a magazine it started in 1997, after publication of the September issue. “The readership of the magazine did not develop as we hoped it would,” Conde Nast Chairman S.I. Newhouse Jr. said. The magazine has a circulation of about 500,000.

Sport, covering professional and collegiate basketball, football and hockey, had a circulation of 750,000 in 1997. But it fell behind other sport-specific Emap titles such as NFL Insider and Muscle Media, reflecting the increasing popularity of niche titles.

Sport had not earned a profit since Petersen Publishing bought the title in 1988, Emap spokeswoman Blanche Frankel said Tuesday. Emap bought Petersen last year for nearly $1.2 billion.

The magazine was dealt a blow this month when Philip Morris, under pressure from state attorneys general for allegedly marketing its cigarettes to teens, said it would pull advertising from 42 magazines with 15% or more of readers younger than 18, the legal age to smoke.

Philip Morris ads were worth about $500,000 a year to Sport, Frankel said.

Fewer than 10 staff members remain at Sport’s New York offices, and Emap said it will try to find them jobs at the company’s other 140 U.S.-based publications.