“Sports Budget” was another publication from the Amalgamated Press stable concentrating mostly on football, either short stories or factual reports, running to two series.
The first issue was January 13th 1923 and each issue was printed on newspaper stock. It had 24 pages and sold for 2d. Amalgamated Press had tried different football formats earlier with Football Favourite (4/9/20-30/4/21) and Sports for Boys (20/10/20-21/4/21) and seemingly came up with the winning and much more long lived Sports Budget. The main bulk of its stories were dedicated to football, although there were alternatives in the shape of cricket and rugby. This first series ran for 11½ years (595 issues) from 6/1/1923 until 2/3/1935. Another AP publication called Football Weekly was incorporated into Sports Budget on 30th January 1937.
A second series began under the title The New Sports Budget for two issues, before reverting to Sports Budget with issue 3. This series also contained long complete stories and serials relating to sport, but towards the end carried more general features and fiction. Series Two didn’t run as long as the first series, mainly thanks to the outbreak of WW2 in September 1939. It finally closed after 4½ years (241 issues) making 836 issues in total and the last issue date seems to be around 14th October 1939. According to Comics UK it merged into Detective Weekly at this time. The last issue – number 241 – carried a Sexton Blake story written by Charles Malcolm presumably to help the transition
(information taken from Soccerbilia website)
Click one of the links below to see the cards in that series.
1920s Heaven 