Football Scotland is the latest victim of the digital revolution that has revolutionised the delivery of football news.
In January the Daily Record and Reach got together to launch the ‘new look’ site led by former Celtic View man Gregor Kyle and four other members of staff.
Unlike other parts of the Record empire Football Scotland worked exclusively on the digital front but after two months Kyle left with a shuffle of the chairs putting Ibrox fanatic Jonathan McFarlane in charge with predictable results.
A summer full of good news about matters at Ibrox and the imminent implosion of Celtic seemed like an agenda from message boards. Now on the back of Celtic upsetting the odds in the first Glasgow derby of the season Football Scotland is being brought fully inside the Record umbrella.
The Press Gazette reports:
Reach is closing its website dedicated to Scottish football nine months after launching it despite bosses being “extremely pleased” with traffic. Football Scotland’s content will subsumed into the Daily Record website to supplement the daily title’s own “huge daily football audience” and to “grow this successful project further”, a Reach spokesperson said. Both websites are already based in the same Glasgow office.
With print circulation expected to fall below 100,000 within the next six months the Record has been searching for ways to hold up advertising revenues to fund their operations.
The explosion of social media and independent websites with minimal running costs has hit the Glasgow publisher hard with the closure of Football Scotland bringing to a halt another digital venture that failed to stand on it’s own advertising feet with the carpet pulled less than 10 months after launch.
