Publishing's sure thing

The name of the paper is The Sportsman, but any sports content will be tailored to the journal's primary purpose: advising readers on how to make money from the increasingly popular pastimes of spread betting and online poker.

Where betting has traditionally centred on horse and greyhound racing, the rise of gambling is being fanned by other sports, particularly football, that offer many more opportunities for placing bets than merely picking a winner.

The growth of broadband has also helped to fuel the boom. Research company Forrester reported last month that 76% of the UK's 29m adult internet users admitted to regularly placing a bet either online or offline, while Nielsen//NetRatings found in April that the online gambling audience had grown 45% year on year. In February 2005 alone, 3.2m UK internet users visited a gaming website.

Deedes says these opportunities have created a new breed of gambler, one who rarely, if ever, ventures to a racecourse or a betting shop, but follows lots of different sports through Sky Sports, and is attracted by the instantaneous, constantly changing nature of online gambling.

Broad offering

It is this nuance that will differentiate The Sportsman from race-goers' bible the Racing Post, says Deedes. 'We will feature the day's race cards and previous day's results, (as) the Racing Post already does, but we will offer a lot more.

'Spread betting can be very complicated and people need some guidance and advice on betting strategies,' he adds. 'The Racing Post is what its title suggests, primarily a racing paper, and is only paying lip service to sports betting at the moment.'

Deedes has certainly given his rival plenty of notice of his intentions.

The Sportsman won't appear before spring 2006, but is being publicised to help attract funding; £12m is needed to kick-start the project.

Deedes believes that the two papers can co-exist peacefully. He says that The Sportsman can be profitable on a sale of 40,000, half that of the Racing Post and points out that before the Sporting Life closed in 1998, the two daily betting papers had a market of about 120,000.

Trinity Mirror, owner of the Racing Post, may think otherwise. The paper is a substantial revenue contributor, with annual profits of about £18m, and earlier this year was the target of a £210m bid by a consortium of racing enthusiasts, which Trinity Mirror rejected.

It is clearly a valuable franchise, which the publisher is expected to defend vigorously.

It has already made incursions into The Sportsman's territory with RPgaming, a quarterly magazine distributed free with the Racing Post and other Trinity Mirror papers, including the Liverpool Echo and Newcastle Evening Chronicle. RPgaming covers how to gamble more intelligently, and crosses into casino gambling and poker, areas The Sportsman intends to cover.

Trinity Mirror declined to comment on its activity, suggesting that it might be working on plans to thwart The Sportsman and does not wish to give anything away. Yet Deedes, who fought cover price wars with The Times in his days at the Telegraph, is unfazed by the prospect of a David and Goliath battle.

Much of this confidence is down to a belief that there is more than enough potential advertising - from online poker, betting exchange and spread betting businesses and casinos - to satisfy both papers' profit aspirations without needing to cut each other's throats.

One prospective advertiser, Betfair, gives credence to this notion. Betfair is not a bookmaker, but links up punters to bet against each other, and specialises in in-play betting, where odds fluctuate during a game according to changes in events. This form of betting is best suited to sports such as football, cricket and golf, and Betfair says it would be keen to support The Sportsman.

Advertising potential

Richard Downey, publisher of Dennis' gaming titles, is another who believes the advertising market can support new titles. He launched Inside Edge, a 20,000-circulation monthly, in April last year. Next month he will debut Total Gambler, with an initial print run of 650,000 to be distributed free with Dennis titles such as Maxim, and is plotting the launch of a monthly poker magazine to mop up a surfeit of advertising demand from online poker businesses.

'Online gambling is illegal in the US, yet there are lots of gambling titles, so there is room for growth here in the UK, where online poker is becoming a mainstream activity,' says Downey.

According to Ian Tournes, press director at Starcom Mediavest, the Racing Post is missing a trick by not tapping into this boom. 'It doesn't sell to its full potential, and there is definitely a gap in the market for another paper.'

The next six months will see whether Trinity Mirror moves to close that gap to keep Deedes out. The prospect might make a decent spread bet.