Sportsnet magazine's publisher and editor-in-chief, Steven Maich, said reader response to the publication's launch last week has been "really humbling."

"There's been a lot of people out there tweeting that the magazine is a lot better than what they expected," Maich told Masthead, adding that his team has also received positive email response. "I don't know what they expected," he laughed, "but I'm glad to know we're exceeding people's expectations."


Maich said he's not at liberty to discuss numbers but noted that sales are strong on newsstands.

"Retailers have been really thrilled," Maich said. "A lot of them only ordered a few copies and sold out pretty quickly and are scrambling trying to get more. We're in the process now of reallocating things, trying to get copies back out to the places where they've sold out."

The initial newsstand run of Sportsnet was 100,000 copies.


Subscriptions are also doing well, according to Maich. "We've exceeded our own internal expectations of how many people would sign up pre-launch," he said. "It's been very nice to see so many people so enthusiastic."

The new publication is part of Sportsnet's rebranding across all platforms: TV, radio, print, digital and mobile. The bi-weekly magazine's print edition hit stands on Thursday and the digital iPad edition came out Friday.