Sports (newspaper)
Sport is a Spanish daily with paid sports press and morning distribution, published in Barcelona. According to the data from the study of the Diffusion Justification Office (OJD) of July 2014, it has an average circulation of 96,981 daily copies, and an average circulation of 61,981 daily copies. These data make it the fourth best-selling sports newspaper in Spain, behind Marca and As, published in Madrid, and Mundo Deportivo, also published in the Catalan capital. Since 2019 Sport belongs to Prensa Ibérica.
History
The Sport newspaper was published in Barcelona and created by Josep María Casanovas of Grupo Mundo. The first publication to appear on the kiosks was on November 3, 1979, the year in which two sports newspapers, El Mundo Deportivo and Dicen, already lived in Barcelona. The name of this newspaper has a double meaning: "sport" which comes from the English meaning "sport".
Diario Sport has its newsroom in a building on Consejo de Ciento street, in the heart of the Ensanche district of Barcelona, and has its own correspondents in the main cities of Spain and in the most important countries in the world of football: Brazil, Argentina, England, Italy, Germany and France. Likewise, in recent years an expansion policy has begun with the creation of various sister newspapers in some Spanish provinces, although with different titles. In turn, it has promoted the creation of the newspaper "Deporte", in Galicia, and in Aragón it is the owner of the sports newspaper "Equipo".
It was a newspaper that from the first moment marked his personality to perfection, since he decided to rely on the use of technology and that led to it becoming the first newspaper of Spanish origin that had color pages, a format that for nothing was usual at that time. But it was not only that that marked his character, but also the union of information with opinion.
Another characteristic of the Sport newspaper is the independence it enjoys, which is common to all newspapers. But unlike the others, Sport exerts a great influence on the voice of the fans of the FC Barcelona team. In addition to dedicating a large number of pages to this team, in which he uses language close to the followers of the Blaugrana squad at all times.
As mentioned above, during the years 1979 a magazine called Top Barça and three more sports newspapers were published in Barcelona, El Mundo Deportivo, Dicen and 424. But the arrival of Sport caused the newspapers Dicen and 424 to disappear, the first in 1985 and the second in 1980.
Ten years after its first publication, Sport achieved something unexpected: surpassing the number of readers of what is currently its main competitor, El Mundo Deportivo. But to continue achieving victories, he had to take many measures, among which we find one of special importance, to be part of Grupo Zeta or not. It will be in 1992, when the newspaper would make the decision to form part of this group, with which it achieved great growth without the need to change its editorial line. After this, they decided to introduce a notebook in the central pages as if it were a magazine with reports, interviews, infographics and even photos.
Thanks to all these incorporations and changes, a year later it managed to achieve significant popularity that was reflected in the change of that old store. They were able to allow the incorporation of Macintosh brand computers with which they were able to do their work better thanks to the editing system that these devices incorporated. Also noteworthy this year, which managed to exceed 1,000,000 copies for the first time since its birth.
In 1996, they decided once again to introduce new systems, this time including a multi-print system that allowed them to increase to 30,000 copies in one year. In this way, this improvement would be reflected in the creation of a new design and changes in its format, which obtained more color.
As is well known, for a newspaper to be successful it is very important that it reach a large number of readers, but over the years the Periódico Sport has suffered successes and also disappointments. The data collected by the EGM clearly show that the most favored years were the following. By 1984, it had 123,000 readers a day, a large readership for its early years. In 1997 it also managed to exceed half a million readers with 555,000. Another date of success was 2004, where it managed to exceed 600,000 readers and finally in 2007 where it achieved 625,000 readers. But the key year would be 2010, when the triumph of this newspaper would be clearly seen, managing for the first time to exceed 700,000 with the figure of 737,000 readers per day.
To finish, we must know that the distribution of the information provided by the newspaper Sport is divided as follows: 97% are football news, 1% correspond to basketball news, another 1% are motorcycle news, 0% news about tennis and finally 0% that corresponds to news about cycling, leisure and others.
As we have seen, the highest percentage is taken by the news that deals with soccer, as a consequence we observe that the rest of the news that does not deal with this sport, such as basketball or tennis, only fills 2.84% of the space from the newspaper. On the other hand, with regard to football news, it can be said that 52 of the 1,830 contents provided by the newspaper are about this sport, of which 86.12% correspond to topics on the First Division and 73.06% They are news about FC Barcelona that compared to the news about Real Madrid, 7.7%, we can observe the decantation of Sport towards the Barcelona team.
Origins of the Sport newspaper
Before arriving at the Sport Newspaper that we all know, years ago there were some newspapers that are considered the origins of Sport.
In the mid-19th century, more importance was given to publications dealing with velocipedism, the name by which cycling was known at that time. As a result of this popularization, newspapers considered antecedents of Sport began to emerge that were exclusively dedicated to this sport, as is the case of El Ciclista. Revista de Sport de Barcelona, a newspaper that dealt with both national and foreign news from the year 1891. This was an organ of dissemination of the Society of Velocipedists of Barcelona, in addition to managing to print for four years and reaching 92 publications.
Subsequently, another newspaper dedicated to this sport appeared in Barcelona in 1892, El Ciclista. Three years later, El Veloz Sport emerged in Madrid, a medium that talked about both Spanish and foreign cycling. But in 1897, it ended up merging with Barcelona Sport, thus forming El Veloz, which launched its first issue on June 5, 1898.
Before getting to the Sport that we all know today, we must also mention a newspaper that was created during the XX century. This Madrid newspaper is called Gran Vía and was created in 1903. It was characterized by not being specialized in sports content, but also provided society affairs.
Thanks to all the newspapers we have named, it has been possible to create what we know today as the Sport newspaper. But especially the Crónica del Sport should be highlighted, from the XX century, considered a clear example of sports publications that have evolved until ending up introducing news of various sports, not only national but also international.
To finish, say that the newspaper Sport is one of the longest-running sports publications of the XX century.
The covers of "Sport"
You have to give a section to the covers because it is an important part of the newspapers, since it is the showcase of the printed media as well as being the first contact that the reader has with the newspaper.
The value of the front page is not only because it is the first thing the reader sees, but also because sometimes readers buy newspapers just to read this first page, which is why it is so important to know how to inform properly and about everything manage to surprise to capture the reader.
Periódico Sport divides its front pages as follows: 96.2% are news about soccer, 1% about tennis and 0.7% deal with news about basketball. With these, it can be seen that this newspaper gives more importance to soccer on the front pages than to other sports. Also to say that the covers of the Sport Newspaper differ from those of its national competitors, for having been the first sports newspaper to use offset color in a flat tabloid, achieving graphic aspects that capture attention at the moment.
But to get to the front pages of today, the headlines of the newspaper Sport have undergone several evolutions, since they have always tried to redesign their format. The key change was to arrive at the logo we know today, a logo created by Miquel Herre Banus. Which underwent some gray shadow tweaks first and the removal of the italics to apply the colors later.
Now, to be able to understand the importance of the front pages of sports newspapers, you have to see the differences that exist with the front pages of informative newspapers. The first inequality that differentiates them from those of informative newspapers that opt for visual organization, sports covers are more daring when it comes to using images. Hence, the Sport newspaper has so many colors and images of different sizes on its covers.
Secondly, we find the difference in the use of the linguistic field. Sports journalism has created new languages in order to market the show more easily. This language used by sports newspapers is of special importance on the covers, hence the value of choosing the words or phrases that will be used for this first page properly. In conclusion, this importance of the acquisition of information on the front pages can be clearly seen in the Sport newspaper, which manages to capture the reader instantly thanks to the use of colors and words that attract attention.
Digital version
The company decided to join the new technologies in 1997, first in a modest way and little by little with more resources, until finally betting on the newspaper on the Internet.
This decision was made mainly by the introduction of technologies in the world of people and secondly by the growing demands that Sport received from its readers, who wanted to be able to get the news from their favorite teams at any time and anywhere. Finally this was possible and Sport made the decision that its contents deal with sport from a closer and entertainment-oriented vision.
But to be able to provide this new news, it had to make some changes such as the adoption of the web-first or web-centricity, a mechanism that consists in first informing, producing texts and multimedia pieces for the web rather than producing news for the print edition. And not only that, the way of presenting the information had also changed, now it is through social networks and new tools that help to enrich their formats and their digital narrative genres. Of course, the journalistic techniques of selection, analysis and distribution of information remained the same.
On the other hand, there is Sport's digital audience, which is a large audience that breaks records, but that only reaches its content through their tablets or smartphones and this has motivated the newspaper to be forced to include mobile users leading to the change of the newspaper from Digital First to Mobile First.
This change to Mobile First has had an impact on the narrative formats and the news genres that are typical of the sports medium, motivating the creation of a way to offer news that is in real time, chronicles every shorter and more direct that will be accompanied by graphic elements and statistical data. Its objective with this is to make it easier for all readers to read through accessible and attractive content. In addition to the fact that the combination of entertainment with information facilitates the participation of users on Twitter, Facebook or YouTube.
This characteristic structure of the media in the field of Spanish sports information has generated more dynamism. And for this, they have decided to increase the number of digital projects that are used to tell stories and even to configure journalistic formats, genres or languages. Even so, social networks continue to be the loudspeaker of all the respective content.
But when presenting the information in the on-line environment, we must remember that it must be different from the written press format. Y Sport has a particular personality that is especially characterized by the shapes and styles it uses. Within these, there are the surveys that are frequent since they serve as an alternative of quick expression and less worked. Social bookmarking is also particular to this journal, allowing users to select, manage, categorize, and share their favorite pages. Finally, the use of voting is typical, since with this they can value the use of RSS reader resources to get their content to reach other web pages that have previously requested it.
Another feature of the media today is how essential social networks have become. For Sport, these have become a tool in order to design their contents, get all of them disseminated and create a place for discussion for users, with the aim of getting them to participate and interact.
For this reason, all the sports newspapers, including the Sport newspaper, have their own profiles on social networks, which are updated at all times, be it Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. However, it seems that according to the data collected by the EGM, the followers that Sport has on its social networks do not correspond to the number of readers who read the printed newspaper. This is reflected in the low interaction of users on social networks, since the type of interaction they do is only react on Facebook and FAV on Twitter.
According to OJD data, the website obtains more than six million unique users, more than twenty-five million visits and more than ninety-six million page views. Being in first place in the Catalan sports press online.
To conclude the section, it must be stated that the trend of mobile journalism, adaptation of the newspaper on tablets or smartphones, was launched by the Sport newspaper in November 2014, coinciding with the 35th anniversary of the birth of the Catalan sports newspaper.