NFL Magazine Closed

I posted something like this on the original thread.

My phone was blowing up the day they announced the magazine because of what I do. Nobody had ever heard of Dauphin Media Group, or Mike Dunphy, and when we asked around the only thing anyone knew that he had ever done was a magazine with some personality from HGTV that had folded and was embroiled in law suits.

Which made me immediately conclude someone made a stupid licensing deal. The NFL had no interest in doing a print magazine. It was never going to be a success. And it is very costly to start a print magazine, with a newsstand strategy like the one that one had, and there is way more potential for failure than success.

The NFL is fully invested in digital media. But they are in the business of taking people's money, if they are willing to give it to them.

I never found out the details of the arrangement, but given how costly it would be to market the thing, do direct mail, get it on newsstands, and deal with printing and mailing in a changing magazine environment (as more and more goes digital), the idea on the face of it was insanity. The typical NFL fan -- does he want a monthly magazine filled with fluff, or does he want timely news, fantasy football updates, etc.?

The only possible explanation I could come up with still doesn't make much sense to me. The NFL is usually very careful about guarding its reputation. But maybe it went after a buck? If it did, this would have been pure licensing money. They get paid a licensing fee to use their name. I am sure they put limits on the content. That way they take no financial risk and some idiot pays them to use their name.

From a reputation standpoint, though, if that was the case, I am wondering why there wasn't anyone there thinking about how bad that company could make them look if the execution sucked (and that was very likely, given who they picked). The liklihood of a print start up like that succeeding -- without a lot of money to blow through first -- is nil. And when you work with an unknown like that, you are putting your reputation in his hands.

So basically someone at the NFL decided it was OK to look bad for launching a magazine and then folding it a couple of issues later, because they went after a quick (and probably not all that lucrative) buck.