Sports magazines perform very differently between newsagencies from the data I see. Cricket magazines, for example, perform poorly in my Forest Hill shop while Golf, Soccer and AFL titles perform well. Since many are small volume titles, they need careful management at the distributor end. Unfortunately this is not always the case and newsagents end up over-serviced in one sport and under-serviced in another.
Since magazine distributors act in isolation, it is a challenge for them to adequately manage the category for newsagents. While it is impractical, sharing data, even category data, between distributors could lead to more equitable distribution for newsagents. Outside of the Trade Practices Act issues with this, I suspect that such sharing may not be in the commercial interests of the distributors.