ACP has closed its soccer magazine Football+ following low sales, but has left the door open for potential 'one shot' future issues.
The publication was first produced to be a guide to the 2010 FIFA World Cup, with issues released periodically, however the title has now been "suspended".
ACP men's lifestyle publisher Ewen Page told AdNews that Football+ is in a state of "suspended animation".
"It was conceived as a guide to the 2010 Football Word Cup, which was highly successful. The thought was to bring it out periodically to test the water as a brand and as a product. While we were very happy with the magazine’s quality and unique position, it just wasn’t selling enough to justify the cost of production," he said.
"Tough for us football obsessives on staff but we’re not abandoning the brand altogether. We’ll definitely go again for the next World Cup and will also take a hard look at the Asian Cup, being held in Australia in 2015. We see Football+ as an excellent brand for selected ‘one-shots’ and, possibly, other platforms, so it ain’t dead yet."
The axing of Football+ follows the closure of fellow football titles Soccer International in September and Australian Football Weekly earlier this year.
Andy Jackson, publisher of rival magazine Australian FourFourTwo, told AdNews: “We're disappointed to see Football+ go as it was a welcome and quality addition to the football media landscape. However it shows that offering a print-only model in today’s media market is just not commercially viable and a multiplatform approach as we’ve adopted with FourFourTwo is the only way to survive what remain challenging times for all of us. Our launch of The Football Republic this year was another strategic step for us to open up new revenue streams for us in football.”
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