Total Sports' Assets Bought
by Steven Zeitchik -- Publishers Weekly, 3/4/2002
Wayne Parrish, an Internet entrepreneur and former Quebecor executive, has bought all the assets of bankrupt publisher Total Sports for $350,000 and is deciding what to do with them.
Parrish said that it's too early to determine how much, if any, of the Total Sports list might come back, or how he might do that. He is considering breaking off pieces of the list and selling them, then forming a new publishing line associated with his startup, Sport Media Group. "We're working through the reference and trade titles and talking to authors and agents," he said. "What we'll be at the end of that process, I can't tell you. But we have some interest in doing some publishing, perhaps some packaging." Parrish said interest has been shown by one of the losing bidders for the Total Baseball line of reference books. Because it requires only minimal work every year, the reference line is widely viewed as the jewel in the crown.
The purchase surprised many – including Parrish himself, a secured creditor who had walked into the bankruptcy hearing last month expecting to leave only with some of the assets. But despite $6.7 million in books stored in the PGW warehouse, the bids didn't run high enough to offset TS's debt.
