The Financial Times saw both the biggest Covid-19 sales recovery among the UK’s national newspapers and the biggest year-on-year decline in August, according to the latest ABC figures.
Although the newspaper grew its average sales by 9% month-on-month to 94,395 in August while most titles stayed steady, this was a drop of 42% year-on-year.
The i newspaper paints a similar picture, growing by 5% month-on-month to 151,760 but falling by a third in a year.
Both papers are the only national newspapers audited by ABC that include large numbers of bulk copies, which are sold to venues, such as airport lounges, at a discounted rate.
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These were likely impacted by the closure and drastically lower footfall at such venues during the pandemic, some of which began to recover in August.
Elsewhere the Metro added a further 36% copies back onto its distribution as a slow trend of people leaving their homes more and returning to the office continued, although it is still publishing 64% fewer copies than last year.
Most national newspapers saw year-on-year decline of about a fifth. The Observer and the Mail on Sunday did the best in this regard, falling by 10% and 11% respectively.
The Times, Sun and Telegraph titles are no longer publicly audited by ABC.
The Telegraph instead publishes its subscription figures, which in August were 511,837: of these, 309,889 were digital and 201,948 were print.
Its net new subscriptions were 6,757.
National newsbrand circulations in August 2020 (ABC) with monthly and yearly changes:
| Publication* | ABC circulation for August 2020 | Month-on-month % change | Year-on-year % change | Bulks |
| Daily Mail | 994,081 | -1% | -15% | |
| Mail on Sunday | 872,375 | -1% | -11% | |
| Evening Standard (FREE) | 514,040 | 2% | -37% | |
| Metro (FREE) | 504,226 | 36% | -64% | |
| Daily Mirror | 388,718 | 0% | -19% | |
| Sunday Mirror | 316,962 | -1% | -20% | |
| Daily Express | 251,736 | 0% | -18% | |
| Daily Star | 237,266 | 0% | -22% | |
| Sunday Express | 221,385 | -1% | -17% | |
| i | 151,760 | 5% | -34% | 8,215 |
| Daily Star Sunday | 141,011 | -3% | -22% | |
| The Observer | 139,851 | 0% | -10% | |
| Sunday People | 125,216 | 0% | -17% | |
| The Guardian | 109,533 | -1% | -15% | |
| Financial Times | 94,395 | 9% | -42% | 20,514 |
| Sunday Mail | 92,349 | -1% | -18% | |
| Daily Record | 91,556 | 1% | -18% | |
| Sunday Post | 73,547 | 0% | -22% | 500 |
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