The Scotland-based specpub Fieldsports Press has acquired from Future Plc the 141-year-old weekly Shooting Times and the associated brands Sporting Gun, ShootingUK.co.uk and YouTube channel The Shooting Show. The £200k deal (50% deferred for a year) is the third acquisition in nine months for the Edinburgh-based publisher which bought Trout & Salmon from Bauer last month and five sports shooting magazines from local media group Archant in 2022.
The seven-year-old Fieldsports Press is one of a group of small publishing, PR and investment companies owned by Selena and Simon Barr and based variously in England and Scotland.
The clue to the company’s recent acquisitions may be Selena Barr’s Tweed Media PR. The company – which had £500k revenue and £30k operating profit in 2021-22 – is the PR for Gordy & Sons, a family-owned, Houston, Texas-based fishing and hunting retailer. The US company, whose VP Garrett Gordy is a director of Tweed Media, last year provided a $250k loan to the group.
It seems reasonable to believe that – while these relatively small Future magazine-centric divestments were negotiated before the arrival this month of Jon Steinberg as CEO – they may be just the first selloffs by the listed company as it seeks to simplify its portfolio and focus on higher growth brands.
