Interview: Jeremy Deedes, The Sportsman (Evening Standard)
Jeremy Deedes, the Telegraph Group's former chief executive, says his new paper for gamblers can succeed - and he's betting his own money that it will. By David Rowan
WHEN Jeremy Deedes was last in the headlines, he had just been dragged out of retirement to oversee the sale of the Telegraph Group to the Barclay brothers. A year on, the quiet life following his racehorses is again proving elusive: this time, Deedes has quit his second stab at retirement to launch The Sportsman, an ambitious new seven-day sports paper. The Deedes genes - his father William is still reporting at 92 - clearly won't tolerate inactivity.
"I just know how exciting these adventures are," Deedes Jr, 61, explains jovially in the conservatory of his comfortable Berkshire village house, full of delicately inlaid furniture he made himself. "Coming off the golf course on Monday, I discovered I had 38 new phone messages." Besides, he adds grinning, "I think Mrs Deedes probably thinks she's seen quite enough of me hanging around the house."
For all the pleasantries, The Sportsman is a brutally bold attempt to shake up the daily sports-paper market. Trinity Mirror's sports titles, predominantly The Racing Post, made £18 million profit last year, an extraordinary margin of 37 per cent. Deedes's paper, aimed at a younger demographic, will also include up to 70 pages of racing in 128 tabloid pages. But there, he insists, the similarities end.
"This will not be a replica of The Racing Post," he insists. "Yes, we'll carry the race card and the form, but we're focusing on the explosion of sports betting outside of racing and the online casinos. The more we talked to bookmakers, the clearer it became that their major frustration was the lack of an all-embracing conduit to reach this new generation of betters."
The paper is the idea of Charlie Methven, a 29-year-old former Daily Telegraph journalist who took redundancy last year. Methven, who will be publisher and editor-in-chief once £12 million has been raised, has recruited Deedes to chair the operation, as well as Max Aitken, great-grandson of the former Express proprietor Lord Beaverbrook, to run the business side.
"A groom working on a stud farm in Suffolk, I'd suggest, might find that our publication won't be for him," Methven explains. "Equally, a City trader who plays the spreads and enjoys perming a bet on Premiership games, I'd like to think we were for him and not The Racing Post."
Yet this is not the only new sports paper rumoured to be in planning. Last week, Private Eye suggested that Simon Kelner, editor of The Independent, and Tristan Davies, of The Independent on Sunday, may be developing "a national sports newspaper along the lines of l'Equipe" - speculation which Kelner dismissed last night as having "no truth in it whatsoever".
"One is constantly hearing rumours about people who come up with flashbulb ideas to launch a new sports paper," Methven sighs. "But I don't know of any plans to launch a daily gambling newspaper."
Deedes, former managing editor of the Evening Standard and Today, and editorial director and MD at the Telegraph Group, says that the first issue should appear by mid-spring 2006, well in time for the World Cup in June. With his own money at stake and seed investment from Ben and Zac Goldsmith, he is now leading a tour of City firms to raise the bulk of the £12 million.
"We're at the early stages," he admits, "but I'm very encouraged by the noises we're hearing. We're not there, of course; but we've got a first-draft business plan, a structure of the staffing, even a flatplan. We'll be producing our first dummies in the next five or six weeks."
It is intended to be profitable at a circulation of 40,000 - "a conservat ive estimate", Deedes points out, and roughly half that of The Racing Post.
The big question is whether potential investors will write the cheques to back up their positive murmurings. Stephen Glover, the former Independent on Sunday editor, has spent well over a year trying to raise £15 million to launch an "upmarket" daily newspaper, with evidently only limited success. Won't Deedes meet the same impasse?
"I've read [Glover's] business plan, it's very well done, but if any institution had asked me whether my instincts were that 100,000 people at the top of the demographic scale were interested in that sort of newspaper, I'd have struggled to say yes," he repl ies. " It's a market extremely well catered for." This market, by contrast, is growing fast yet under-served.
But what's to stop Trinity Mirror fighting dirty to kill The Sportsman at birth? "I'm sure they will defend their position, but I really believe we can coexist," Deedes replies calmly. "Its title tells you what it is - until a few years ago, horse and greyhound racing were the core of the betting business, but the advent of the internet and other sports betting have revolutionised the industry."
Even if the Post were to widen its editorial remit to spike The Sportsman's guns, it will always be perceived as the racing paper. "Some of us have had experiences of trying to change people's perceptions of established newspapers," he adds, referring to The Daily Telegraph's battles to attract younger readers. "The trouble is that perceptions lag behind reality for a long time."
A price war, he warns his prospective rivals, will serve neither party's interests. "I know a bit about price wars too, and the only person who benefits is the reader, who simply gets the product cheaper. Would the benefits from the additional advertising outweigh what was being sacrificed in the cover price? If I were in Trinity Mirror's shoes, I would struggle to make the sums add up." Trinity Mirror will say only: "We wouldn't comment on other people's launches."
Other editors have questioned whether Deedes's plans for a daily print publication - possibly using the Telegraph's presses - make economic sense, with more and more betting now online. "We will have both print and website, with interactive betting, but there's still an appetite for a print version," he replies. "You can't take the screen with you when you go racing."
IF THE money does come through, the consortium will certainly have a chairman committed to the subject matter. "I've always been interested in gambling, especially in my youth," Deedes admits. "My best win was when I persuaded the Evening Standard, back in the Sixties, to let me play in the first world poker championships at the Carlton Hotel in Cannes. We had a huge Fleet Street school down there, and I played the other journalists. There was a moment at 3am when I held every traveller's cheque of every journalist covering the event." He stayed in the hotel for two weeks, and still came home with a profit.
But then two years ago, he continues, he had his "worst disaster ever". "On the final day of the [golf] Open, I backed Thomas Bjorn for £40 each way at 100-1. He looked an absolute cert until he failed to get out of the bunker on the 16th."
The Sportsman, he admits, will be his biggest gamble yet. "Everyone in Fleet Street gets a bit excited about a new publication, but I'm sure if you ring Sporting Index they'll give you a spread on how long it's likely to last," he says. "I'm betting my own money on this one. And what we've got to make certain is that we don't get into the bunker on the 16th, let alone fail to get out again."
(Evening Standard, July 13 2005)
. . . AND READ MORE MEDIA INTERVIEWS HERE . . .
WHEN Jeremy Deedes was last in the headlines, he had just been dragged out of retirement to oversee the sale of the Telegraph Group to the Barclay brothers. A year on, the quiet life following his racehorses is again proving elusive: this time, Deedes has quit his second stab at retirement to launch The Sportsman, an ambitious new seven-day sports paper. The Deedes genes - his father William is still reporting at 92 - clearly won't tolerate inactivity.
"I just know how exciting these adventures are," Deedes Jr, 61, explains jovially in the conservatory of his comfortable Berkshire village house, full of delicately inlaid furniture he made himself. "Coming off the golf course on Monday, I discovered I had 38 new phone messages." Besides, he adds grinning, "I think Mrs Deedes probably thinks she's seen quite enough of me hanging around the house."
For all the pleasantries, The Sportsman is a brutally bold attempt to shake up the daily sports-paper market. Trinity Mirror's sports titles, predominantly The Racing Post, made £18 million profit last year, an extraordinary margin of 37 per cent. Deedes's paper, aimed at a younger demographic, will also include up to 70 pages of racing in 128 tabloid pages. But there, he insists, the similarities end.
"This will not be a replica of The Racing Post," he insists. "Yes, we'll carry the race card and the form, but we're focusing on the explosion of sports betting outside of racing and the online casinos. The more we talked to bookmakers, the clearer it became that their major frustration was the lack of an all-embracing conduit to reach this new generation of betters."
The paper is the idea of Charlie Methven, a 29-year-old former Daily Telegraph journalist who took redundancy last year. Methven, who will be publisher and editor-in-chief once £12 million has been raised, has recruited Deedes to chair the operation, as well as Max Aitken, great-grandson of the former Express proprietor Lord Beaverbrook, to run the business side.
"A groom working on a stud farm in Suffolk, I'd suggest, might find that our publication won't be for him," Methven explains. "Equally, a City trader who plays the spreads and enjoys perming a bet on Premiership games, I'd like to think we were for him and not The Racing Post."
Yet this is not the only new sports paper rumoured to be in planning. Last week, Private Eye suggested that Simon Kelner, editor of The Independent, and Tristan Davies, of The Independent on Sunday, may be developing "a national sports newspaper along the lines of l'Equipe" - speculation which Kelner dismissed last night as having "no truth in it whatsoever".
"One is constantly hearing rumours about people who come up with flashbulb ideas to launch a new sports paper," Methven sighs. "But I don't know of any plans to launch a daily gambling newspaper."
Deedes, former managing editor of the Evening Standard and Today, and editorial director and MD at the Telegraph Group, says that the first issue should appear by mid-spring 2006, well in time for the World Cup in June. With his own money at stake and seed investment from Ben and Zac Goldsmith, he is now leading a tour of City firms to raise the bulk of the £12 million.
"We're at the early stages," he admits, "but I'm very encouraged by the noises we're hearing. We're not there, of course; but we've got a first-draft business plan, a structure of the staffing, even a flatplan. We'll be producing our first dummies in the next five or six weeks."
It is intended to be profitable at a circulation of 40,000 - "a conservat ive estimate", Deedes points out, and roughly half that of The Racing Post.
The big question is whether potential investors will write the cheques to back up their positive murmurings. Stephen Glover, the former Independent on Sunday editor, has spent well over a year trying to raise £15 million to launch an "upmarket" daily newspaper, with evidently only limited success. Won't Deedes meet the same impasse?
"I've read [Glover's] business plan, it's very well done, but if any institution had asked me whether my instincts were that 100,000 people at the top of the demographic scale were interested in that sort of newspaper, I'd have struggled to say yes," he repl ies. " It's a market extremely well catered for." This market, by contrast, is growing fast yet under-served.
But what's to stop Trinity Mirror fighting dirty to kill The Sportsman at birth? "I'm sure they will defend their position, but I really believe we can coexist," Deedes replies calmly. "Its title tells you what it is - until a few years ago, horse and greyhound racing were the core of the betting business, but the advent of the internet and other sports betting have revolutionised the industry."
Even if the Post were to widen its editorial remit to spike The Sportsman's guns, it will always be perceived as the racing paper. "Some of us have had experiences of trying to change people's perceptions of established newspapers," he adds, referring to The Daily Telegraph's battles to attract younger readers. "The trouble is that perceptions lag behind reality for a long time."
A price war, he warns his prospective rivals, will serve neither party's interests. "I know a bit about price wars too, and the only person who benefits is the reader, who simply gets the product cheaper. Would the benefits from the additional advertising outweigh what was being sacrificed in the cover price? If I were in Trinity Mirror's shoes, I would struggle to make the sums add up." Trinity Mirror will say only: "We wouldn't comment on other people's launches."
Other editors have questioned whether Deedes's plans for a daily print publication - possibly using the Telegraph's presses - make economic sense, with more and more betting now online. "We will have both print and website, with interactive betting, but there's still an appetite for a print version," he replies. "You can't take the screen with you when you go racing."
IF THE money does come through, the consortium will certainly have a chairman committed to the subject matter. "I've always been interested in gambling, especially in my youth," Deedes admits. "My best win was when I persuaded the Evening Standard, back in the Sixties, to let me play in the first world poker championships at the Carlton Hotel in Cannes. We had a huge Fleet Street school down there, and I played the other journalists. There was a moment at 3am when I held every traveller's cheque of every journalist covering the event." He stayed in the hotel for two weeks, and still came home with a profit.
But then two years ago, he continues, he had his "worst disaster ever". "On the final day of the [golf] Open, I backed Thomas Bjorn for £40 each way at 100-1. He looked an absolute cert until he failed to get out of the bunker on the 16th."
The Sportsman, he admits, will be his biggest gamble yet. "Everyone in Fleet Street gets a bit excited about a new publication, but I'm sure if you ring Sporting Index they'll give you a spread on how long it's likely to last," he says. "I'm betting my own money on this one. And what we've got to make certain is that we don't get into the bunker on the 16th, let alone fail to get out again."
(Evening Standard, July 13 2005)
. . . AND READ MORE MEDIA INTERVIEWS HERE . . .
posted by David Rowan at Wednesday, July 13, 2005
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