As predicted last year on these pages, the UK publisher of Shooting Times, Sporting Gun and The Field has been sold. The three titles, part of Time Inc.’s extensive portfolio of magazines, have been acquired by private equity company Epirus, in a deal thought to be worth £130m.
Alex Fortescue, the managing partner at Epirus is on record as saying: “The business itself offers plentiful scope for transformation through operational improvement and mergers and acquisitions”. That statement can safely be taken as presaging a fire sale of a number of underperforming titles and cuts to the 1,700-strong workforce.
Where this leaves the stable of shooting magazines, which also includes Shooting Gazette, is anyone’s guess, but given the years of underinvestment in the publications and long term declines in advertising and circulation revenue, it won’t be any surprise if they are among the assets to be got rid of. It is a mark of the decline in their fortunes that just a few years ago, Shooting Times on its own was valued at more than £5 million. It is unlikely that the three magazine together would now fetch even a third of that. However, despite this there would be a queue of publishers keen to take the titles on. Candidates might include Kelsey Publishing, which has a track record of squeezing profits out of poorly performing publications and Archant, owners of Sporting Shooter and Airgunner.