The move to a $99/year subscription (50% off first year) for bundle of items. Yes, I’m old & becoming increasingly a curmudgeon who still has some issues of Tri-Athlete magazine in a box. Questioning the value presented.
The move to a $99/year subscription (50% off first year) for bundle of items. Yes, I’m old & becoming increasingly a curmudgeon who still has some issues of Tri-Athlete magazine in a box. Questioning the value presented.
Might be worth it if you lived in Colorado, as it includes registration for a bike race/ride there. I stopped my subscription to Triathlete two years ago - I miss it a bit as I do like reading actual books and magazines, but I can get content elsewhere.
Wait,
They still publish that?
For $99/year, it had better be high-gloss, heavy-stock, mostly ad-less, “more book than magazine” type shit … like Surfer’s Journal
I wouldn’t count on it though
I let mine lapse at the end of 2014.
I still get them in the mail!
At first I saw it and thought that it was just an add on option, but I think your assessment is correct. Making the $99 subscription the only plan is definitely a risky endeavor. I still subscribe to triathlete, but I subscribed at like ten bucks for the year. It’s a nice magazine to read some articles, see some cool race photos, etc… The active pass option is way to expensive for me considering I can’t do that race any year due to work commitments. So $99 for a magazine would require a lot of quality content to get me in the door. I would need weekly hard copy issues with limited ads. Something tells me that this could be the final nail in the coffin for the magazine.
Print advertising has been collapsing for over a decade as ad spending has moved online. COVID-19 has provided further acceleration. I’ve been subscribing to Car and Driver for decades, and in looking at the latest issue, I was stunned by how little advertising there is.
I don’t know how print can survive. Raising prices may only be one of the options.
I’ve been subscribing to Car and Driver for decades, …
I have’t even thought of Car & Driver since I was a kid and used to steal any issues with a Porsche on the cover from 7-Eleven
.
I saw this coming from the other end a few days ago. On the VeloNews website (and I assume probably on Triathlete’s as well), some of the content is now blocked unless you buy the Active Pass. So from what I saw, I need to pay the $99 to get full access to the websites, and in addition I get a subscription and the other stuff…
At first I saw it and thought that it was just an add on option, but I think your assessment is correct. Making the $99 subscription the only plan is definitely a risky endeavor. I still subscribe to triathlete, but I subscribed at like ten bucks for the year. It’s a nice magazine to read some articles, see some cool race photos, etc… The active pass option is way to expensive for me considering I can’t do that race any year due to work commitments. So $99 for a magazine would require a lot of quality content to get me in the door. I would need weekly hard copy issues with limited ads. Something tells me that this could be the final nail in the coffin for the magazine.
Sadly, yes. Looks like a desperation move. Velonews is part of the same group, so its days may also be numbered :(. Reminds me of when Lava went digital-only.
The problems with the bundle is that it is expensive ($99 isn’t a notion purchase), and it inevitably contains things some users will assign little or no value to (ex. a bike race entry in a state you don’t live in, a training plan you don’t use, etc.).
Maybe a USAT membership would be a better idea, that way region doesn’t play a role in it. Regardless, it seems like a very desperate move. They did switch editors fairly recently and abruptly, so maybe this fueled the decision by the other editor to leave.
Making the $99 subscription the only plan is definitely a risky endeavor.
Is it the only plan? I just found the link to subscribe to the print version ($34.95 for 6 issues) or the print and digital ($44.95 for 6).
I no longer subscribe to any print magazine that publishes on a regular basis so I don’t know the avg. subscription cost for a print magazine.
Making the $99 subscription the only plan is definitely a risky endeavor.
Is it the only plan? I just found the link to subscribe to the print version ($34.95 for 6 issues) or the print and digital ($44.95 for 6).
I no longer subscribe to any print magazine that publishes on a regular basis so I don’t know the avg. subscription cost for a print magazine.
You can find a deal on New Yorker for about $25/year and that’s a top tier magazine.
At first I saw it and thought that it was just an add on option, but I think your assessment is correct. Making the $99 subscription the only plan is definitely a risky endeavor. I still subscribe to triathlete, but I subscribed at like ten bucks for the year. It’s a nice magazine to read some articles, see some cool race photos, etc… The active pass option is way to expensive for me considering I can’t do that race any year due to work commitments. So $99 for a magazine would require a lot of quality content to get me in the door. I would need weekly hard copy issues with limited ads. Something tells me that this could be the final nail in the coffin for the magazine.
Sadly, yes. Looks like a desperation move. Velonews is part of the same group, so its days may also be numbered :(. Reminds me of when Lava went digital-only.
The problems with the bundle is that it is expensive ($99 isn’t a notion purchase), and it inevitably contains things some users will assign little or no value to (ex. a bike race entry in a state you don’t live in, a training plan you don’t use, etc.).
And they have not thought ahead to do a bundle if one subscribes to VN and Triathlete. Very poorly thought out from the beginning. I’m definitely not worth the money IMO.
Who is their targeted reader? The gear reviews are superficial, never critical and closely correlated with advertisers. I don’t think I’ve learned anything interesting from the occasional pro athlete profile. The food recipes, training tips and other “advice†is useless. Every issue has some feel good story about an AGer overcoming fill-in-the-blank adversity, with the same story arc.
Fortunately, we have Slowtwitch’s front page to provide useful content.
I’d hate to imagine what it costs for Australians with the exchange rate.
Its full Of advertising. Stopped buying about 8 years ago.
I’d buy it if you could get it without so much rubbish in it
But you are paying to read adverts
I subscribe to Apple News+Magazine for $15.00/mo CDN. Over a hundred subscriptions available monthly including 220 Triathlon from the UK which I think is very good. Includes Canadian Triathlon and about 6 cycling magazines, a couple of running mags., and lots of general interest. Hitch is you need to be an Apple product user.
I subscribe to the print edition to add to my selection of reading materials while I’m on the toilet.
It’s gone way downhill over the years. Half the content only 6 times a year for twice the price, but it’s still something to read.
I don’t think I’ll be continuing for $99.00
I understand that people want/need to get paid for writing content but how you get there is becoming a mess.
I’m in the UK, and almost everything in their package is worthless to me, so paying $99 for some extended version of the free content is a very high price.
I already pay/donate to CyclingTips veloclub at $60 year, but that funds a very wide range of articles, podcasts and videos across a wide spectrum of subjects, all of which are a very high quality.
So $99 for what are mostly short superficial articles/tests doesn’t look like good value.
I currently pay £10 month for The Spectator news/magazine website access but that has a lot of new content every day, usually long detailed articles. But I’m not sure if I will continue with that when the whole pandemic thing ends.
I also donate randomly to sites/podcasts/people if I think that I have found their content useful or interesting over a period of time. But I want to get my information from a wide range of sources and not be reliant on a few that I have chosen to pay for.
I would guess that I’m only interested in less than half of the content that even my most popular sources publish. Frequently there is only one article I’m interested in from a particular publisher but I can’t read it because it requires a subscription for their whole content database. If I signed up for every page I visited that blocked me unless I subscribed I would be paying hundreds of pounds/dollars a month, that’s not a financial model I can accept.
I guess in “the old days” there was only one or two magazines that covered niche sports so it was easy to just buy one or both, but now there are loads of websites covering triathlon and thousands covering cycling, you can’t buy/fund all of them.
But I don’t have the answer to the problem.
Print advertising has been collapsing for over a decade as ad spending has moved online. COVID-19 has provided further acceleration. I’ve been subscribing to Car and Driver for decades, and in looking at the latest issue, I was stunned by how little advertising there is.
I don’t know how print can survive. Raising prices may only be one of the options.
Print Advertising and print in general has been collapsing. But what companies spend for online advertising is significantly minuscule by comparison to the ads that are in print. Look at the Athletic, online-only-subscription model. Stalling.
Every newspaper out there makes 5-10x from print ads than online.