Including new website, winter and spring sports magazines
Kansas Pregame publisher John Baetz is expanding his business with publishing winter and spring sports magazines, a new website and more coverage of football.
“My favorite part about the growth of the business is learning about all the tremendous young people in this state and following them in the sports they love,” Baetz said.
Baetz is launching a new spring sports preview magazine edition focusing on baseball, softball and track and field this spring.
“Plans are underway for the cover shoot right now, and we hope to get the magazine completed and distributed by the end of March,” Baetz said.
Baetz, a Lincoln County resident and former publisher of the Lincoln Sentinel and Chapman & Enterprise News-Times, now called the Dickinson County News-Times, began publishing the Kansas Pregame Football Magazine almost 14 years ago, he said. Baetz published the two newspapers for 15 years before he decided to sell the businesses and expand Kansas Pregame.
“Even though I started covering sports on a statewide basis with my first Kansas Pregame Football Magazine almost 14 years ago, I’m really a fan of all sports and have published basketball and wrestling publications on a smaller scale for years,” Baetz said.
In the beginning, Baetz said coverage focused on a little over 100 western Kansas teams; now it’s statewide. Kansas Pregame publishes the only statewide high school football preview in Kansas. In November 2018, Baetz launched the first-ever Kansas Pregame Winter Sports Preview with full coverage on basketball and wrestling.
“I really enjoyed compiling the publication,” he said.
Baetz also launched a new website at www.kansaspregame.com in mid-January, and posts content daily on the site. He said in over two weeks, the site hit about 8,000 visitors.
“It’s very labor intensive so it will take time to grow it to what I want it to be, which is a comprehensive outlet for feature coverage of high school sports in Kansas,” Baetz said. “KansasPregame.com probably won’t be the place you go for post game coverage or a complete list of scores and stats, but we do want to tell stories about schools and leagues from across the state in a feature format with high quality photos.”
In the future, Baetz said he hopes to expand coverage to volleyball, cross country, golf and soccer.
The Kansas Pregame print products are distributed free through advertisers across the state, and are also available as a free e-Edition online.
Baetz said Kansas Pregame has over 13,000 followers between Facebook and Twitter, with plans to expand to Instagram in the near future.
By Hailey Dixon for the Lincoln Sentinel
