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July 17, 2019updated 30 Sep 2022 8:04am

Cricket World Cup picture wrap helps boost Times sales as BBC marks record online figures

By Charlotte Tobitt

A picture wrap of the moment England won the Cricket World Cup helped The Times boost its sales by about seven per cent.

It shows New Zealand batsman Martin Guptill being run out by England’s Jos Buttler during the game’s “super over” finale on Sunday (below).

Monday’s Times also contained a 16-page pullout of “the greatest game in cricket history”.

Owner News UK estimates the paper’s souvenir edition led to an extra 24,000 sales, up 7.1 per cent week-on-week.

Digital subscription sales also climbed by more than a fifth (27 per cent) week-on-week on Sunday.

Editor John Witherow said: “Readers turn to newspapers in their droves at big moments and winning the Cricket World Cup is no exception.

“The Times has a long history of superb cricket coverage: our iconic wrap and Mike Atherton’s front page analysis on Monday gave cricket fans new and old all the insight they needed on that epic finale.”

According to the latest ABC circulation figures for May, the Times has an average circulation of 401,361, including 75,815 bulk sales.

The Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph also featured souvenir pullout supplements on the win.

BBC News online reported record audience figures for Sunday, which also saw the Wimbledon men’s final and the British Grand Prix take place.

BBC News sports editor Dan Roan said the cricket live page received 39.7m page views, the tennis page had 13.4m page views and the GP page had 2.5m views.

The previous record for a single live page on BBC News online was 35.4m for the 2017 election, Roan said.

“[This] means that the World Cup Final attracted more views than any other live page – across both News and Sport – this year,” he tweeted.

Live coverage of the cricket on Channel 4 attracted a peak audience of 4.5m people, with a total peak audience of 8.3m across both Channel 4 and Sky.

Times front page on 15 July 2019

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