Indian edition of Sports Illustrated launch in October 2009

The Indian edition of the United States-based magazine Sports Illustrated is being launched on October 5, 2009.

Named Sports Illustrated India, the Indian edition is being brought out jointly by Time Incorporated, The Sports Illustrated Group, and Dennis Media TransAsia.

According to Richard Downey, publishing director of Dennis Media TransAsia, Sports Illustrated India, priced at Rs 100 a copy, will have an initial print run of 1,00,000 copies.

The content mix of the Indian edition, Downey says, will comprise in-depth analyses of sports and photography as well as guest columns.

The first issue of Sports Illustrated India will have a total of 128 pages, out of which 100 pages are for editorial and the rest for advertising.

Richard Downey told a news conference that the publishers of the magazine expect great success in India mainly because “India is the most sport-crazy country,” with cricket being the most popular game. Due coverage also will be given to other popular sports such as tennis, football, boxing and Formula 1.”We will look at a lot of cricket and other interesting sports as well,” Downey added.

Sports Illustrated India will be a monthly and not a weekly because, according to Downey, “we are starting from scratch, and would not have been able to do justice to the kind of in-depth analyses we are looking at for the Indian edition.”

Since the publishers have arranged a tie-up with Reebok, Sports Illustrated India will be available at Reebok stores across India.
Time Incorporated and The Sports Illustrated Group have been jointly publishing international editions of Sports Illustrated, under licence, in South Africa since May 2006, and in China since September 2006.

According to the publishers, the primary target audience of Sports Illustrated consists of males in the age group of 25-45 years. The secondary target group comprises sports fans.

The Indian edition of the magazine will be “fast-paced” like the other editions, and it will pick, every month, one article from the archives of Sports Illustrated.

The launch of the Indian edition will be accompanied by an advertising drive in the country’s leading print and electronic media.

Sports Illustrated India will be edited by Sundeep Misra, a sports journalist.

Those writing guest columns include Farokh Engineer, Saurav Ganguly and Shiv Kapur.

The cover feature of the debut issue will have ‘Twenty Greatest Indian Cricketers of All Time.’

Sports Illustrated, founded in 1954, is a division of Time Incorporated, which is a leading magazine publishing company in the world and a subsidiary of Time Warner. The magazine reaches a weekly readership of about 21 million.

The Sports Illustrated franchise includes Sports Illustrated Kids (www.sikids.com), which is a monthly magazine for children aged 8 years and above, as well as Golf Magazine.