Group buy offered in horseracing books

Two smallish Canadian horse magazines -- HorseLife Magazine, the official publication of Equine Canada and The Racing Journal, a print and online publication which covers thoroughbred and quarter horse racing in Western Canada and the United States -- have signed on with Racing Unified Network (R.U.N.), a wholly owned subsidiary of Toronto-based Sungold International Holdings. R.U.N. will sell advertising to national advertisers on behalf of these publications and their web sites.

In addition to the two Canadian titles, Sungold announced it was also going to represent The HorsePlayer, a popular California-based thoroughbred magazine (circ. abt 50,000) and Washington Thoroughbred Magazine (circ. <5,000). Larry Simpson, R.U.N.'s president said: "Historically, these magazines have had difficulty in attracting national advertisers, perhaps because of their individual circulations. With the aggregation created by Racing Unified Network's media program, advertisers will be more interested, as collectively these publications can boast a larger circulation and a target audience."

It's not just commission that R.U.N. is after. "Most importantly," he added, "as we introduce new advertisers to these publications, we will be establishing the contacts needed for marketing our own between-race video ads that will cycle between our Horsepower® World Pool races. We can offer a unique service by 'bundling' print advertising, flash ads for web sites and eventually video stream ads for our own Horsepower® World Pool product. Horseracing and other equine disciplines is a very affluent and attractive market for advertisers."

He said that this type of sales concept they are not restricted to just horse and horseracing publications. "Eventually we intend to 'bundle' some other sports and leisure publications into the mix as well."

(Sungold has two other 100% wholly owned subsidiaries: Horsepower Broadcasting Network (HBN) International Ltd., which sells a pari-mutuel, virtual horse-racing system delivered on video and SafeSpending Inc., an anonymous Internet payment system which allows consumers to pre-purchase spending vouchers for purchases online without divulging any confidential information as would be necessary if one used a credit card or any other traceable transaction service.)