Haymarket Publishing has appointed Premium TV, Europe’s largest digital sports publisher, to run an online version of its flagship monthly football magazine, FourFourTwo.

The appointment is the first for the Premium TV’s new Business Development unit, headed up by the company’s former advertising and sponsorship director, Bryan Winning, who has been promoted to the role of business
development director. The new unit has been set up to exploit rights holders, broadcasters, brands and content owners assets across mobile and digital platforms – replicating the successful revenue-generating model built for UK football.

Premium TV will design, build and editorially manage the FourFourTwo website, creating up-to-the-minute news content through its own in-house editorial team and re-purposing exclusive magazine content each month. Premium TV will receive a share of revenues for advertising, sponsorship, mobile, e-commerce, subscription, betting and gaming incomes generated by the site.

Oliver Slipper, Premium TV commercial director, commented: ‘We want to help content owners and rights holders who have previously been wary to invest in
new media and broadband technology due to cost, management bandwidth and fear of cannibalisation.’

Martyn Jones, FourFourTwo publisher said: ‘Premium TV is the ideal partner for the FourFourTwo brand with its expertise in managing and exploiting football websites. It will not be a mirror of the magazine but will contain some of the interview and features from the previous month, so as not to cannibalise offline sales. We will also sell subscriptions to the magazine, create new revenue strands, store archive magazine content and to promote the next issue.’

FourFourTwo is the market leading football magazine with a circulation of 104,447 copies every month. (ABC July – Dec 03)

The news follows Premium TV’s successful renegotiation of the terms of its FLPTV joint venture with the Football League. The result sees Premium TV focus on building a network of commercial sites for brands and media
owners, which currently includes Coors Brewers’ Carling Cup site.

For more information contact: Mark Terry, Premium TV, 01452 760 147 or email mark@renegademedia.net.