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Steve McGarry working with third major syndicate

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Steve McGarry, creator of Biographic and Kid City has added a third package for the upcoming World Cup soccer tournament. If having three features wasn’t interesting enough, he’s now represented by three different syndicates: Universal (Biographic); United Media (Kid City) and now Washington Post Writers Group (World Cup 2010).

Anyone know if this sets a record for having the most number of concurrent syndicated packages with different syndicates? Post it in the comments or email me.

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Comments 12

  1. (If I have the dates right) In 2002/early 2003 Guy Gilchrist had “Screams” distributed by DBR Media, “Night LIghts & Pillow Fights” via Copley, and was doing UFS’ (United Media) “Nancy. Maybe Guy can confirm?
    Going back a hundred years they say C. W. Kahles had eight strips going at the same time in 1905/06. Most of them were with the N. Y. World and its syndicate, such as “Clarence the Cop”, “Tim and Tom”, “Mr. and Mrs. Buttin” and others. But also he had “Billy Bounce” with T.C. McClure and “Pretending Percy” with the Philadelphia North American. I would not doubt that he matched that at others times during the 1900s/1910s.
    Those were the two cartoonists who first came to mind –
    maybe others?

  2. DD Degg…sometimes i think you know more about what I’ve done than I do. In the early 2000s…I did work with three syndicates at the same time.
    I had Mudpie/Night Lights with Copley, Screams with DBRMedia, as well as DBR running reprints of my earlier sunday Night Lights poems in black abd white as “The Poetry Guy”. ” Your Angels Speak” and “Nancy” were with United Features. And my handicap in golf was ridicously high because I never had a few seconds to play .

  3. I think the definitive word was “major” syndicates.

  4. Nothing in headlines counts. Any reporter knows that — usually to his chagrin. The question was “three different syndicates.”

  5. DD,
    I’m not sure who is doing Steve’s European, and other Global sales, or if that even matters in your question. But just for the record, we used Atlantic (the same syndicate that Universal used) for our global spanish market sales, and PIB (who worked with both King and United) in Europe for all others regarding NL/Mudpie. We always had more worldwide sales on Mudpie than in the US, even though our Sunday Page was an illustrated poem. Terrific syndicates, both of them.

  6. Oh, well, if you want to count international syndicates, then I have you easily beaten, Guy! On this World Cup package I have direct independent deals with:

    Bulls: Scandinavia and the Baltics
    Bulls: Poland
    Benelux: Bruno Productions
    Italy: ILPA
    Portugal: Agencia Feriaque
    Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Paraguay: Ipress
    Greece: Hellas
    South Africa, Namibia, Malawi, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Swaziland, Botswana : Press Features
    India, Sri lanka, Nepal, Mauritius: Asia Features

    WPWG are handling US, Canada and all other territories.

    I’m also currently working with Kipka in Germany on another project … so I think that’s actually 13 separate syndication deals on the go right now if we use the Gilchrist method of accounting!

    I’ve been doing these soccer packages every two years since 1982 (World Cup and European Championships.) I’ve always kept the UK rights and used agents for international sales. I was originally represented on the soccer stuff by Express Syndication of London. In 1990, I switched to United Media. Then in 1996, I began working with directly with a number of international agencies.

    I’ve actually used both of the agents that Guy mentions. PIB were my Scandinavian agents before I switched to Bulls and I worked with Atlantic on a number of projects before they were bought out by Universal … and obviously, many times since. (I’ve also been represented by Yaffa in Australia, which like Bulls, is an agent that usually handles all the King Features stuff.)

  7. Is “World Cup 2010” your title? If so did you have to license it from FIFA? Because they’ve been coming down like a ton of bricks on anyone using any combination of “World Cup”, “2010”, “Soccer”, “Football”.

  8. It’s considered illustrated editorial content for newspapers, Rob.

  9. Interesting — plans to put an educational piece about the You-Know-Whats in the paper didn’t cut any slack with USOC a few years ago. They responded “Don’t use the name, don’t use the rings, we have lawyers!” I’ve always wondered what the line was between reporting and running features on their d*mn games (which they certainly don’t mind) and “exploiting” them.

    Either FIFA takes a more enlightened view or I remain confused.

  10. FIFA are definitely not more enlightened. Just using “2010” and anything to do with football sets off alarm bells in Zurich.

  11. Pretty much every major newspaper in the world runs previews of the World Cup, prints the fixtures, profiles, publishes a wallchart, etc. Here’s The Guardian’s special section:
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/worldcup2010
    Similar thing in The Daily Mail:
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/worldcup2010/index.html
    Here’s the Daily Mirror’s wallchart:
    http://www.mirrorfootball.co.uk/news/Download-your-FREE-MirrorFootball-World-Cup-wallchart-featuring-all-the-groups-fixtures-and-venues-article245339.html
    Not all of that content is provided in house, a lot of it is freelance or bought in from agencies … and that’s where we come in.

  12. Way to go, Mac! BTW, I forgot to list Bruno………YOU set that up for me!

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