About Inside Sport

Inside Sport

Inside Sport is an Australian sports magazine published by nextmedia from Melbourne. Founded in 1991, it was for nearly three decades the country's leading general sports monthly, covering everything from AFL and NRL to the Olympic sports, motorsport and the outdoor pursuits that rarely made the back pages. Its print edition ceased in June 2020; the brand continues as a digital publication at insidesport.com.au, carrying forward a masthead with one of the longest runs in Australian sports publishing.

Overview

Inside Sport's editorial proposition was breadth. Where the daily sports pages and the specialist titles each served their codes — the footy papers, the cricket magazines, the surf and fishing titles — Inside Sport covered all of it: the major professional codes, the Olympic sports, motorsport, boxing, golf, tennis, cycling, and the adventure and action sports that mainstream outlets ignored. That breadth was its identity and, for much of its life, its commercial strength: a single magazine for the sports fan whose interests crossed codes.

The print magazine was a monthly of around 100 pages, priced at $8.95 in its final years, built around long-form features, interviews, photography and the regular departments — letters, a winners-and-losers round-up, the "Freeze Frame" photography pages, a quotable-quotes column, a sports television guide and a page for punters — that gave it the feel of a clubhouse conversation in print. The digital edition continues the brand's sports coverage online.

History

Inside Sport was launched in 1991, entering a market where general sports magazines were rare in Australia. The title found its audience among sports fans underserved by the code-specific press, and over the 1990s and 2000s it became an institution — the magazine that covered the sports the newspapers didn't. Its longevity was remarkable in a category where titles came and went: by the 2010s it could fairly be described, as Mediaweek did, as "an Aussie sporting icon."

The magazine's publisher for most of its mature life was nextmedia, the Sydney-based specialist publisher formed in 2007 from the publishing assets of Horwitz Publications, Next Publishing, Chevron Publishing Group and Bluewater Publishing, and acquired by Germany's Forum Media Group in 2013. Nextmedia's portfolio — spanning sport, motoring, tech, children's and hobby titles — made it one of the country's largest independent magazine publishers, and Inside Sport sat alongside stablemates including Australian Muscle Car, Golf Australia, Tracks and the children's titles K-Zone and Total Girl.

Editors of the modern era included Graem Sims, editor in the mid-2010s, and managing editor Jeff Centenera, who steered the brand in its later print years. Under Centenera the magazine leaned into its historic strength — the sports that got less attention elsewhere. Action sports, triathlon, basketball and the emerging pursuits found a mainstream print home in its pages at a time when the major codes dominated broadcast and digital coverage. Centenera noted the access advantage: where the big sports had become guarded and media-managed, the minor sports were forthcoming, and the magazine could do them justice.

The print edition's end came in June 2020, a casualty of the pandemic's devastation of magazine advertising and distribution. The closure ended a 29-year print run. The brand's continuation online — at insidesport.com.au — preserved the masthead in digital form, following the path of many Australian specialist titles that traded print for the web.

Editorial character

A 2015 issue profiled by Mediaweek illustrates the magazine's character at its peak: a Robbie Farah cover interview conducted just after State of Origin, an Ashes preview from the editor of the sister title Inside Cricket, a Stuart O'Grady cycling interview confronting his doping admission, an "AFL by numbers" analysis of momentum across four quarters, a look at Australian tennis after Lleyton Hewitt, and a Penrith Panthers profile — alongside the photography pages, the TV guide and the punters' page. It was a mix no daily paper could offer: the time and space for the long interview, the statistical deep dive and the beautifully shot feature.

The magazine's photography was a particular strength. The Freeze Frame pages showcased world-class sporting images — the kind of pictures that rewarded print — and the title's covers regularly featured the biggest names in Australian sport. Its willingness to put minor sports on equal footing with the major codes gave it a distinctive editorial voice: democratic about sport, curious about everything.

The UK licensing episode

Inside Sport's brand travelled. In the late 1990s the Australian title was licensed to a British publisher, Brackenbury Publishing, which launched a UK edition aimed at the young male market. The British version — heavy on cover models and lad-mag styling — bore limited resemblance to the Australian original, and it was short-lived: the title was suspended after the publisher's liquidation. The episode remains a footnote in the brand's history, a reminder of the late-1990s vogue for exporting Australian magazine brands.

The publisher

Nextmedia, founded in 2007, grew into one of Australia's largest special-interest publishers, with a portfolio spanning magazines and digital properties including the IT titles IT News and Digital Nation. The company's 2013 acquisition by Forum Media Group gave it German ownership and a stable corporate base through the turbulence of the 2010s. In 2018 nextmedia sold its consumer computing and tech titles — including Atomic, Hyper, PC PowerPlay and PC Tech & Authority — to the UK's Future plc, which later acquired further titles including Australian Camera and Australian Guitar. Inside Sport remained with nextmedia through these changes, one of the company's legacy mastheads.

Sister titles and the sports stable

Inside Sport did not stand alone in nextmedia's portfolio. The company published a suite of sports titles that mapped the Australian sporting landscape: Inside Cricket, the code-specific cricket monthly whose editor contributed Ashes coverage to Inside Sport; Golf Australia; Tracks, the surf title; Australian Muscle Car and Motor Racing Australia for motorsport; and the league-linked annuals around the V8 Supercars and the NRL's Big League tradition. This stable allowed cross-pollination — writers, photographers and editors moving between titles — and gave nextmedia a sports publishing footprint no other Australian magazine company matched.

The economics of that stable were the economics of special-interest publishing: each title served a defined community of readers and a defined set of advertisers — the golf equipment makers, the surf brands, the car manufacturers — and each could survive on circulations that would doom a general-interest magazine. Inside Sport, as the generalist among specialists, was the exception that proved the rule: it needed the broadest audience and the broadest advertiser base, and it was the generalist that eventually lost its print edition while several of the specialists endured.

The digital transition

The move to digital-only in 2020 changed the brand's rhythm from the monthly print cycle to the continuous publishing of the web. The insidesport.com.au site carries the brand's sports coverage — news, features and the photography-led storytelling that defined the magazine — to an audience that discovers it through search and social rather than the newsagent's shelf. For a title whose print identity was built on the long read and the big picture, the digital format demands adaptation: shorter cycles, sharper packaging, and competition with every other sports outlet on the internet.

What the digital edition retains is the masthead's equity — nearly three decades of credibility with Australian sports fans — and its editorial instinct for breadth. The sports the brand championed in print, from triathlon to action sports to the Olympic disciplines between Games, remain underserved online, where algorithms reward the major codes. A digital Inside Sport that continues to cover everything else still has a publication to be.

The sports magazine landscape

Inside Sport's print closure reflected the structural challenges facing general sports magazines worldwide: the migration of sports news and analysis to digital platforms, the rise of code-specific content from the leagues themselves, and the difficulty of sustaining a monthly print cycle against the immediacy of broadcast and social media. Specialist titles with passionate niches — the surf magazines, the golf titles, the fishing press — proved more durable than generalists.

The brand's digital continuation keeps the masthead alive for an audience that still values its breadth. In an Australian sports media landscape dominated by the AFL and NRL — and by the broadcasters and betting companies that fund so much coverage — a publication willing to cover everything else retains a distinct role. Inside Sport spent 29 years in print proving that appetite existed; its online edition continues the argument.