Written by Team MD
07 January 2016

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Exclusive Publishing Contracts

Are They Yesterday's News?

 

Exclusive publishing contracts for athletes have been part of bodybuilding magazines for roughly 25 years. Now, with the advent of social media, bodybuilders can and will post continually on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. Some have suggested a smarter solution for the magazines would be to simply pay athletes for content as in one-ff payments for individual interviews and photo shoots, with exclusive contracts being made a thing of the past. We asked out three seasoned Olympians – Shawn Ray, Dorian Yates and Kevin Levrone -- should the current system of exclusive contracts continue?

 Shawn Ray

“Exclusive contracts” should be abandoned for several obvious reasons. First, the term “exclusive” is not actually adhered to by the athletes, thereby making any such agreement null and void as soon as the athlete shares information with another media source, be it social or print. Every athlete these days posts on social media.

What’s more, today’s athletes typically don’t engage on bodybuilding forums where the fans are, they wear supplement company apparel in photo shoots, rarely mention their exclusive publishing deal and make information and updates available on their on social media platforms— instead of the contractual publication platform where information should appear first! Rarely are there personal or competitive appearance requirements made of the athletes, thereby limiting the visibility and marketing of the publication deals. Since the publications are paying for exclusivity and not getting it anymore, why should they continue with these contracts?

Publishers should utilize a “pay as needed” flat-rate fee for athlete photo shoots and/or personal appearances, period. There is zero ROI (return on investment) by the publisher to pay out sponsor salaries to athletes who do not even give a company shout-outs in interviews or drive traffic to the digital component of the print magazine family. The majority of the sponsored athletes even avoid interviews following the prejudging, when things don’t go well for them (which is often any time they are not in contention for the win) and following the finals, leaving the digital publishing advertising void of content. I’m all for helping athletes promote and market themselves on a global scale, but I’m totally against the publishers paying athletes to remain invisible and support the lack of promotional advertising for the publisher, publication and the business of bodybuilding!

Monetarily, it simply makes sense to have athletes on a “pay as needed” basis due to athletes choosing to have longer off-seasons, fewer photo shoots and posting more on their on social media and not on the publishing platforms. It’s ridiculous to me that anyone would pay an athlete who does not contribute, advertise or barely support a paying sponsor. Remember, this is a business, not a charity.

My advice to athletes competing today is simple. Do more than necessary, work harder than others, promote sponsoring companies paying you more than you promote yourself, and make yourself invaluable to companies offering you financial support!

In conclusion, my thought is that paying an athlete to do nothing, month after month, will bleed the product and company of financial resources that otherwise could be used to build a better product and a sustainable brand in the short and long run. The days of the past are over, and “pay as needed” should be the rule, not the exception.

 Dorian Yates

Ultimately, whether or not to continue the practice of exclusive publishing contracts is a business decision that the magazines have to make based on whether or not they feel they can get the proper value out of the arrangement. You hear a lot of people saying that print is a dying media form. I’m nostalgic. I still like magazines. A lot of us still want to hold that printed word in our hands. It’s like newspapers. You can read all the news online now, yet there are still daily newspapers in every major city in the world. Bodybuilding magazines have a special place in my heart, as they played a huge role in my early education as a bodybuilder. I still have an extensive collection of older magazines like Iron Man and Muscle Builder going back to the ‘60s and ‘70s, and nothing online could ever replace those.

One thing I still appreciate about magazines is that for the most part, you have to have some legitimate credentials to get published. Any fool can proclaim himself an expert online and spread misinformation to the masses. At the last BodyPower Expo in the U.K., I was surprised to see more than a few men and women with fans eager to meet them, who I had never heard of. I was told they had large online and social media followings. Obviously, social media is changing the industry at a rapid pace. So with all the pictures, videos, blogs and so on that are posted for free, why would a magazine pay an athlete or an expert to be exclusive for print? One reason that might still make sense is to get exclusive content from them that won’t be available anywhere else. For instance, the two-part discussion about steroids that I did along with Shawn Ray and Kevin Levrone nearly a year ago here in MD was something you couldn’t read anywhere else. You had to buy MD to get that. Later on, MD posted it on their site and it quickly went viral online as it was posted and shared.

I think magazines should start being a little more creative and think of other types of exclusive content that would be similarly interesting and valuable. If you have these athletes and experts who all have their own fan bases, they would be willing to buy magazines if it were the only place they could read about certain things. It would only be a matter of coming up with subjects and types of discussions the fans and readers really wanted to hear about, and making sure that your particular magazine was the only place they spoke about that. I know things have changed quite a bit since the heyday of publishing contracts in the 1990s, before the Internet and especially before Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and podcasts. But print magazines are still a viable and important media format, and they still have the potential to remain both relevant and cutting edge. How they decide to handle the whole area of contracts and exclusive content is something they will have to figure out in this new age.

Kevin Levrone

If I owned a magazine, I would have to recognize by now that social media has drastically changed the game when it comes to any type of exclusivity. If you are thinking in terms of ROI or return on investment, you can’t get ROI on an exclusive contract anymore, for the simple fact that your publication will not be the only place the readers and fans can see and hear these athletes. Anybody with a smartphone can see the photos and videos the athletes post on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.

Things were very different in the ‘90s, before the dawn of the Internet. Back then, the magazines truly were the only way you could see photos of the stars and read about them in interviews and training articles. Joe Weider used to have 15-20 athletes signed exclusively to his publications at any given time. I was one of them, for years. As contracted athletes, we could only do photo shoots with Weider photographers, and we could only speak with Weider writers. We were paid well to be exclusive, and it was expensive to keep that stable of athletes under contract. But again, in those days it made sense because our fans had to buy his magazines every month to see our images and learn how we trained and ate. Now, any fan can have a relationship with his favorite pro via social media. The athletes will post all types of pictures and video clips, talk all about their workout or their meals that day, and the best part for the fans is, they can comment and ask questions and often get answers pretty fast.

There is so much content available to anyone with an Internet connection for their phone, computer or tablet that many of them don’t see the point in buying a magazine anymore. But I for one still feel magazines have a valuable place in our sport and industry. A lot of us still like to hold it in our hands and turn the pages. And as far as content, magazines can get a lot deeper than a 140-character Twitter post can. If you really want to read in-depth interviews, profiles and learn how these athletes train, magazines like MD are still the best way.

As for contracts, they just don’t make sense anymore. Instead, magazines should pay the athletes for content. Pay them for photo shoots, video shoots and interviews. If I were starting a magazine today, that’s how I would do it. And if I had anyone under contract, it would be writers and photographers who have their own unique and recognizable styles.

 

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