The company stops publishing printed publications. The spring issue will be the last to be available for purchase in hard copy.
The magazine, which has been published since 1953 and has become a cult in many ways, will no longer be available for purchase in paper form. Playboy content will now be available only in digital format.
The difficult economic situation has become one of the important factors that pushed publishers Playboy stop publishing the magazine in printed form. This has been talked about for a long time, since the beginning of 2018, as it was becoming increasingly difficult for an erotic magazine to compete with the online industry. Since 2019, the magazine even switched to publishing a publication once a quarter and it was about millions of annual losses. And the current situation and forecasts for the crisis awaiting the US economy and the whole world due to the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) became a turning point in decision-making.
Playboy Enterprises CEO Ben Cohn said in a statement that the company's management was forced to speed up the process of shutting down the print publication, which has been talked about for a long time. And the main reasons are called disruptions in the supply chain and the content creation process due to the unfolding coronavirus pandemic.
Playboy will focus on digital content creation. Also, fans of the magazine can look forward to special print editions in 2021, which promise to attract the best and most provocative content creators, collector's editions, as well as several themed consumer products.
