THE BEST BARR NONE?

It’s been a busy couple of years for Fieldsports Press, moving from high-end outriders to mainstream domination in the sector. Steve Faragher talks to Simon K. Barr about the journey

ees with a wider team of expert contributors, totalling over 100. Fieldsports Press is now the largest fieldsports media team in Europe. Our turnover doubled when we acquired the five Archant brands in July 2022 and doubled again in July 2023 when we acquired brands from Bauer and Future PLC.

GTN Have you spent all the money in the pot, or is there more to come?

GTN How’s the dust settling? What’s the fallout? What is the current list of titles you publish?

SB Five years ago, Selena and I had the bold vision of leading a consolidated and revitalised UK fieldsports media sector, harnessing our experience and passion for the British countryside, together with our uncompromising commitment to deliver quality products for our audiences and commercial partners.

Following our recent acquisitions from Archant, Bauer and Future PLC, we needed to make some challenging decisions to restructure the business and its brands. However, these decisions were for the betterment of what we produce and how we offer advertisers the most highly engaged audiences.

We needed to find natural efficiencies without sacrificing quality. Our vision for the newsstand is: do less, but better. All Fieldsports Press brands are being nurtured and invested in, on and offline, with new, more engaging and higher quality products in the pipeline.

We now publish the best, most loved specialist media brands in the sector, covering all aspects of fieldsports. Our brands include Shooting Times Trout & Salmon Fieldsports

Journal Gundog Journal Sporting Gun Airgun World and Rifle Shooter, which are complemented by strong online footprints with websites, newsletters and social media. We also own ShootingUK.co.uk and YouTube channels

The Shooting Show and Shooting & Country TV. Our monthly reach is into the millions, the scale of which has not been available to the UK market before.

GTN Who are your key audiences?

SB Whatever fieldsport’s discipline our audiences participate in, or demographic they occupy, we have the most trusted, best and only brand for them to be engaged by. Our renowned and experienced editorial team and contributors give our brands authority and integrity. Our audiences trust them. The sum of the parts we have spent five years bringing together is most certainly greater than they were alone.

GTN What has been your increase in turnover and staff numbers? There must be a lot of new faces to get to know…

SB We’ve grown from our first print brand five years ago, with a limited digital offering, to acquiring nine separate news trade titles from four publishers. We’ve amassed digital reach into the millions and, from just the two of us, we have grown the team to 40 full-time employ-

SB We have a planned road map of investment which will include enhancing what we have, pivoting to digital and further acquisitions. We have the same vision for what we are doing as we did when we began our journey and are more driven than ever to do our best for audiences and commercial clients alike. We still demand uncompromising quality from our products to engage audiences and provide clients with meaningful ways to connect with them. We have not stopped believing in our quality-first principle to fuel our growth and extend beyond magazines. It is our mission to innovatively lead the market for the benefit of audiences and advertising partners alike.

GTN Should The Field and Fieldsports Channel be quaking in their boots?

SB Publishing is a hard business. We needed to get bigger to get on. Many of the titles we have acquired would not have made it long term had we not consolidated them into Fieldsports Press. We are very focused on nurturing and investing in our own brands now and haven’t given a great deal of thought to what other media operators in the sector are doing, though we wish them well.

GTN Which parts of the sector are you experiencing growth in, if any?

SB We have enjoyed a solid first three months with our new and merged brands. Trout & Salmon has enjoyed a long overdue redesign, foiled cover logo and upgraded paper stock. We have also merged brands that competed for and share audience, but have increased issue sizes of the brands that remain. Sporting Shooter there for nearly five years, so knows the business well. She works within Fieldsports Press in the senior management team overseeing editorial aspects of the business and supports other areas as needed. We are very lucky to have Dom Holtam as MD, who runs the operational side of the company on a day-to-day basis.

GTN What’s your vision? How do you want your brands to behave and appear?

SB We are very excited by our digital plans. Straight out of the gate we are replatforming shootinguk.co.uk, the UK’s most viewed and No.1 ranked online fieldsports content platform. This will include a significant redesign, new features, more editorial content, classified listings, more reviews and a news feed provided by Shooting Times. Also in our pipeline are a number of regular podcasts with our own leading voices hosting them. This will offer au-

Simon and Selena had a vision to revitalise the UK fieldsports media sector has merged with Sporting Gun to create a better, stronger version of both brands. Similarly, Airgunner has been merged with Airgun World which has been completely redesigned and rebranded. With the recent closure of Airgun Shooter by Future PLC, we have made it easier than ever for this audience to know where to find their favourite content. Rifle Shooter has become a bi-monthly title so we can focus on seasonally relevant bumper editions, and we will produce multiple one-off bookazines for this and other audiences to deep dive specific content. This has had a positive impact on reach, newsstand sales and subscriptions.

GTN How closely involved is your wife Selena in the day-to-day running of the business?

SB Selena started her career 20 years ago at Shooting Times working as news editor. She was diences a new way to engage with the brands and teams that lead opinions in the sector.

The overall reach of our brands between, print, web, social, YouTube and newsletters is literally millions of impressions weekly. The possibility to network messages to this entire audience will soon be possible, offering reach potential never seen before in the sector. Advertisers will be able to benefit from aligning with our stable of experts, who engage their trusting audiences with their passion for the content they produce. From buyer’s guides and editorial recommendations, to top tips and the latest must-haves, our audiences turn to our trusted and top-ranking content for inspiration and advice, with an intent to purchase.

GTN If people want to get in touch with you regarding editorial submissions, commercial opportunities, advertising and so forth, who opportunities, advertising and so forth, who are the best people for them to talk to?

SB Each brand has an editor, whose details are available on each respective website for editorial ideas. Karen Biggs, our head of sales, is the person to contact in relation to any commercial enquiries: karen.biggs@fieldsportspress.com

GTN What’s the end goal? Where do you see the Fieldsports Press group in 20 years?

SB We would like to enhance, invest in and grow our existing brands whilst continuing the scaleup journey we are on. We have legacy brands in our portfolio (Shooting Times is 141 years old this year) and are custodians of them for a short period of time in their lifespan. It is our duty to leave them at some point in the future in better shape than when we acquired them.

GTN Future Publishing still has a minority stake in The Game Fair, and have kept hold of The Field. Do you think they are exhausted as a force in shooting, and do you imagine they will therefore be divesting themselves of those assets in the future?

SB It is great that Future PLC are still involved in the sector and I hope their enthusiasm for The Field, Country Life, Horse & Hound and The Game Fair continues. Having a FTSE 250 PLC engaged in the UK fieldsports sector can only be a good thing. Although they have my number now if they decide they’ve had enough.

GTN Tell us a bit about your work for the Atlantic Salmon Trust…

SB I am passionate about the conservation of wild Atlantic salmon, as a keen fly fisher living in Scotland for ten years. I was asked to become a trustee of the AST about a year ago, which I was very honoured to do. The AST are a scientific research organisation that raises funds to conduct independent research which is used to affect change with government to positively impact our wild salmon stocks. It’s something I am very committed to, although we also give a great deal of support to the GWCT through our many brands. They also do a vital job in securing the future of shooting and fieldsports through science and research. GTN GTN