ProCycling magazine, which has been a favourite of many cycling fans for over two decades, has announced it has closed with immediate effect.
The current edition of the magazine, with British star Lizzie Deignan on the cover and featuring her as guest editor, is the final magazine that will be published, according to a short statement issued by the publishers.
"We’re sorry to announce that the current issue of Procycling magazine will be the last. We’re incredibly proud of the fact that since 1999 Procycling has forged an unrivalled reputation for excellent journalism, storytelling, photography and design," the statement said.
"Sadly though, like many other magazines, the high quality of the product is no longer enough to withstand the pressure of a volatile and increasingly challenging market so we've had to take the incredibly hard decision to cease publication.
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"We hope that you enjoy our very special final issue, guest edited by Lizzie Deignan, as much as you have the previous 288 editions. Thank you to all of our readers for supporting the magazine."
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The magazine was owned by Future publishing, which also owns cyclingnews.com and cyclingweekly. The decision to halt publication of the magazine comes just 16 months after its owners launched a new ProCycling website.
The closure of ProCycling comes at the same time that cyclingnews.com has introduced a paywall across its full site. Readers are now required to pay for all content on the site after initially reading five free stories per month.
Those moves - to close ProCycling and introduce the cyclingnews.com paywall - by Future publishing are part of a pattern of more and more sports websites introducing paywalls because the advertising market has been increasingly dominated by Google and social media platforms.
The same process of transition - from free to read content on websites to paywalls - has been underway in the news media globally for many years and has gathered pace since the pandemic began.
In Ireland, for example, all three broadsheet newspapers are now operating a paywall model on their websites, having been free to read platforms in the relatively recent past.
