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ST. LOUIS (AFX) - Sporting News, the 120-year-old publication once known as the "Baseball Bible," is being sold by Vulcan Sports Media Inc. to American City Business Journals Inc., both companies announced Tuesday.
Terms were not disclosed. The deal is expected to be completed early next month.
Besides the weekly magazine, American City acquires Sporting News' online and book publishing units as well as Sporting News Radio Network. Sporting News, based in St. Louis, has nearly 700,000 subscribers.
"Sporting News is a strong brand that we believe has considerable upside in print, online and on-air platforms," said Ray Shaw, chairman and chief executive for Charlotte, N.C.-based American City.
American City is a unit of Advance Publications, the privately held parent company of magazine publisher Conde Nast, Golf Digest, Parade publications and numerous newspapers. American City produces 41 weekly metropolitan business newspapers.
Vulcan, which is owned by Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul Allen and is also based in St. Louis, acquired the Sporting News' publishing and online units from what was then Times Mirror Co. in 2000 and bought the radio network operations of One-on-One Sports later that year. The company also began operating Small World Sports fantasy games company in May 2001.
"We feel fortunate that the next phase of Sporting News growth will be accelerated by ACBJ," said Sporting News CEO Rick Allen, who is no relation to Paul Allen. "They have a deep knowledge of sports and media, a large audience that reinforces and extends our own, and a portfolio of complementary media products."
American City also produces other sports-related publications through its Street & Smith's Sports division. Those publications include sports annuals and yearbooks, SportsBusiness Journal, Sports Business Daily and two publications devoted to NASCAR -- the weekly NASCAR Scene and the monthly NASCAR Illustrated.
Other American City divisions include bizjournals.com, the Hemmings group of magazines aimed at collector car enthusiasts, Biz Books and a technology newspaper. Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be
Copyright 2006 AFX News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
