Having worked in magazine publishing for several years, its an industry finanaced almost exclusively by advertising, and circulation is the key to success in an already busy saturated market place.
The vdub scene has been a long running fan base, stemming from the popular beetle, and camper vans, and onto the early Golf Gti and beyond, SEAT is very young in comparison and still carries the undeserved stigma of being a supposed poor cousin amongst even its parent groups.
Its only through websites and forums like this, that over recent years the brand has gained much more coverage, hence why some of the VW based magazines, PVW, The Golf have now incorporated some SEAT and Skoda interest into their pages.
A magazine has several key factors controlling its financial viability.
Will it have a readership? well even if all of SCN for example were individual readers it would still be a small circulation, i've been out of the loop for a few years in terms of what is classed as a good circulation figure these days, but when i worked in publishing, 30,000 readers a month was considered
lower end of the scale.
Advertising? Will it appeal to advertisers, as strange as it may seem, considering you part with upto a fiver for a mag, the advertisers actually are what make the publisher profits, if they are not selling page space, they are making very little money.
Distribution? A big magazine distributor like WH Smith, or the big supermarkets, won't entertain a magazine on the shelf, if its not selling, they'd rather put something else in its place that does sell, and they also have premiums for shelf location/priorities in
store.
Will it have regular content? Well we know we have several highbrow cars on SCN that are worth features for sure, but in comparison to the VW scene, it may still only be a very small percentage, that are exceedingly modified, ie a bit more than just a chip and exhaust.
Also is there lots of regular products to
review?, we know that many more new products have been developed and sourced alongside companies for SEATs on SCN than anywhere else we could mention.
SEAT's own market share has been rising in the UK over the last few years, and that contributes vastly to create interest for an independant vehicle marque magazine, however in comparison to VW, Ford, and Vauxhall, their total UK marketshare is tiny, this would in itself put the big automotive publishers off, taking a risk on launching a SEAT only magazine.
Maybe SEAT themselves at some point may look into publishing their own brand based magazine, like Honda do, Vauxhall etc..
My own opinion is that magazines in certain markets are fast becoming redundant, as the latest news travels faster on the web.