GOLF WORLD DIPS BELOW 70,000

Golf World, Britain's best-selling golf magazine for most of the 1990s, has dipped below the 70,000 circulation barrier for the first time in more than 15 years.

The EMAP-owned monthly has declared an average figure of 66,118 sales for the last six months of 1998, and now trails behind brand leader Golf Monthly by almost 7,000 sales a month.

The Audit Bureau of Circulation confirmed that out of IPC-owned Golf Monthly's average monthly figure of 72,905, more than 13,000 copies were distributed on a bulk basis, mainly to British Airways.

Emap's other two monthly titles - Fore! and Today's Golfer - weigh in with circulation figures of 61,182 and 60,276 respectively. IPC's Women in Golf is selling 24,759, 11,397 of which are distributed free, and travel-led independent Going for Golf has a monthly figure of 11,017, though fewer than 2,000 copies are paid for.

A newcomer to ABC's golf list is The Player, the UK golf-owned bi-monthly which was formerly known as Masterstroke. Its first declared figure of 58,478 is classified by ABC as free readership because it is sent on subscriptions to holders of a UK Golf mastercard.