Simon Barr is CEO and co-founder of Fieldsports Press, the UK publisher which launched exactly six years ago with the £150k acquisition of Fieldsports Journal and Scottish Sporting Gazette. Since 2018, it has acquired 16 magazines variously from Archant, Bauer, Future, Metropolis and (last week) David Hall Publishing. The six deals represent a total (mostly-self-funded) investment of £3.75mn and have created a specpub with revenue of £5.5mn, and 40 people working remotely throughout the UK.
The company, which is co-owned by Barr and his wife Selina (a longtime countrysports journalist) claim to be breathing new life into some long-established magazine brands, five of which (Trout & Salmon, Shooting Times, Fieldsports Journal, Airgun World and Sporting Gun) may account for 60% of its revenue. The Barr family’s adventure in publishing began when their jointly-owned Tweed Media communications agency sold a 49% share to a Texas-based sporting goods retailer. The proceeds helped them get started in publishing.
In some ways, the high point was last year’s acquisition from Future of the 141-year-old Shooting Times (of which Selena Barr had once been news editor) which included The Shooting Show and some digital assets. The acquisition was characteristic of many of their deals since it involved a cash payment of only £200k but the assumption of greater subscription and employment liabilities including 15 staff.
The company’s focus on hunting, shooting and fishing sports brings with it a reputation for publishing magazines known to be read by members of the British Royal family including the late Queen Elizabeth. Our guess is that – after completing six deals in six years – Fieldsports Press will be going quiet while it pays down its £500k borrowings and squeezes steady profit from a portfolio of brands which had been under-loved for years by previous owners. But we reckon Simon Barr will be tempted to step-up (perhaps with a little help from Texas) when or if Future offloads its weekly Horse & Hound (launched 1884) and The Field (1853). Those legendary magazines are also read avidly in the King’s palaces. Arise…
What’s the story of Fieldsports Press?
My wife, Selena, and I jointly own the business. She graduated in broadcast journalism and, 20 years ago, joined Shooting Times which was then published by IPC Media. She worked as the news editor for four and a half years. I had a media agency background in London. We got together and decided there was a gap for a marketing and communications agency in country sports. We were (and are) both passionate about the countryside and field sports so we set up a specialist, full-service marketing and communications agency, Tweed Media, which we’ve now been running for 15 years. It’s now got about £1mn revenue and, six years ago, we sold 49% of the agency to a Texas family-owned equity fund. We then started doing some work for their sports outfitter in Houston, Gordy & Sons. They took an interest in our business and then decided to invest in it. It gave us some cash, so we were able to acquire our first magazine, Fieldsports Journal, and launch Fieldsports Press in 2018. Since then, we’ve bought 16 magazines.
We realized very early on that just having a singular title was fun, but it wasn’t going to create wealth and success for us at the level of our ambition, so we decided to continue a journey within the market that we both understand so well: Hunting, shooting and fishing is something we’re very passionate about. We understand it and have worked in it for more than 20 years.
How did you do the deals?
We were able to identify opportunities with large publishers where shooting and fishing titles were ‘tail’ assets that were being under-invested in, and we were able to acquire them and find much greater efficiencies and profitability, being part of a business specializing in the same topic. We have a great understanding for the content, whether it’s Air Gun World, Gun Dog Journal or any of our other titles. We have been able to create a successful countryside magazine business.
How much have you invested so far?
We’ve actually spent under £2mn of cash but our total investment is about £3.75mn, taking account of liabilities we have assumed.
How has the business grown?
We doubled revenues in 2022 and again in 2023. We have added to this since with the Metropolis and David Hall deals plus the launch of a B2B brand called ‘Gun Trade Insider’ which has been very successful for us. A previous operator had stopped publishing, so we saw an opportunity. Within one week of launch, we’d sold 24 pages of advertising in every issue for 12 months at full rate card. So it was a very, very successful launch for us. We were very happy with that. We made a (modest) profit last year (FY24) and are on track for a very solid, profitable year with a significant % increase for FY25. We are well on track to do that.
What’s next?
Ninety percent of our revenue is still in print but our next big move is to pivot to digital. We’ve got a very interesting situation where Amazon and Meta have not disrupted our space because they will not allow the advertising of firearms or knives. So, we have a really interesting digital opportunity now. We’ve been able to consolidate a lot of the key titles that cover firearms in the UK and we’ve got high traffic online with our reviews so we can point our readers to the places where they can go and buy things. Amazon and Meta do this in lots of other places, of course, but not in our space. That’s a big opportunity for us.
Also, our deal with Future included the website Shootinguk which has more than 3mn mothly uniques, but its been grossly under-monetised. And that is a great platform for us to be able to work with, but it was just chucked in at the end of our deal negotiations. We also got a YouTube channel with 300,000 subscribers from Future. Both were lossmaking and now we’ve got an opportunity to aggregate a UK audience like nobody ever has before.
We have so far been a wholly UK business but, with the acquisition of Gun Trade World, we suddenly acquired an international title which we now plan to grow.
What are your objectives?
Having largely consolidated the legacy print space in our sector within the UK, we’d like to do the same in the rest of the English-speaking world. We think South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and possibly Canada are options. Then we could become a really interesting business to be sold to one of the larger United States operators! They could then own the whole English-speaking world, including North America. Our content is relevant internationally in English. We think that is a better option than expanding into Europe with so many different languages.
Do you still have direct competitors in the UK?
There’s masses of competition for us still – especially online. We’ve got lots of small competitors out there vying for the same revenue and eyeballs. That’s why our big challenge, really, is to figure out how best to do digital. And, then, there are major brands like Future’s Horse & Hound and The Field.
Is there a role model?
There’s the Outdoor Sportsman Group which claims to be the largest media company devoted to America’s 80mn+ outdoor sports enthusiasts. It’s part of Kroenke Sports & Entertainment including, incidentally, the UK premier league club Arsenal. They have 15 magazines, events, broadcast TV and online channels. It’s got huge audiences in a big market but I’m proud of what we have achieved so far in the UK and how we have learned so much about publishing from first principles. We’ve started well but there’s a long way to go. It looks (and feels) as though we’re going in the right direction. It’s very exciting.
