Accelerated by the Covid pandemic, which has reduced the sports brands’ budget for national B2B advertising, the number of German retailer-oriented trade publications operating in the German sporting goods market has been cut from three to one over a span of just five years. The Ebner Media Group (EMG) has just announced the acquisition of Sportfachhandel, one of the leading German sporting goods trade publications, along with a couple of consumer-oriented magazines, Skimagazin and Skiexclusiv managed by the same company, Sportcombi Verlag. With effect from Dec. 1, Sportfachhandel has been integrated into SAZsport, which is already a property of Ebner. Acting through Neue Medien Ulm Holding, the Ebner family had first entered the sporting goods sector in 2016 with its acquisition of SAZ from its 75-year-old founder and editor, Horst Frankl, a few years after his advertising manager left to launch Sportfachhandlel. The same group subsequently gobbled up another leading German trade publication in the sector, Sport + Mode. The latter was integrated into SAZsport on Sept. 1, 2021.

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