The Sun has begun rolling out a registration wall asking users to sign up for free to read certain stories.
One of the UK’s biggest news websites has over the past few weeks begun restricting access to some articles to users who have registered with their email address.
Registered readers can be targeted with content based on their browsing interests and can also be shown advertising which is sold for more money.
Sun users are told that by signing up, they get a personalised experience with “story recommendations and tailored adverts” across its websites and apps, they will be the “first to know about exciting offers, events and new products”, and they will benefit from “upcoming features as they’re added in the coming months” although it has not yet been revealed what this will include.
Readers are also encouraged to register so they can use “one account for everything” which also includes rewards club Sun Savers, fantasy football game Sun Dream Team, the paid-for digital newspaper edition (which costs £54.99 per year) and “members enclosure” for racing fans (£27 per year).
Press Gazette analysis has found The Sun’s rollout of the registration wall is limited so far.
Press Gazette looked at 92 stories on The Sun’s homepage on early Wednesday afternoon and was blocked from reading just four of them.
They appear to show The Sun is mainly trying out the registration wall on articles from some of its best-known commentators and writers.
The homepage articles behind the registration wall were:
- Dear Deidre: My wife will only have sex with me if it’s a special occasion
- Root is England’s top run scorer but doesn’t have edge of these four icons by cricket correspondent John Etheridge
- Trevor Kavanagh: Labour’s drowning in public disgust but Tories must unite or Keir will win
- First look at Danny Dyer’s new ‘Football Factory’ film Marching Powder that was too shocking for TV
Press Gazette then checked The Sun’s comment page and a higher percentage of these articles were behind the registration wall, including the latest columns by some of its star writers: political editor Harry Cole, Rod Liddle, Jane Moore and Tony Parsons.
The Sun has not gone as far as its most direct rival, Mail Online, which in January introduced a premium tier on its website which makes certain stories available to paying subscribers only. However, the Mail+ partial paywall only affects about ten to 15 of its approximately 1,500 articles published per day – a similar pick of its best-known columnists as well as core content areas like the royals, special investigations, health and personal finance.
The Sun has begun asking readers to pay for online content in one way this summer, however: it is one of six of the UK’s top news websites (also including the Mail) that have put a price (£4.99 per month) on people rejecting all cookies due to regulatory changes.
The Sun’s main website has been entirely free since October 2015 when it dropped its paywall after two years. The site had attracted around 200,000 paying subscribers but lost ground on overall readership compared to Mail Online and the Mirror.
Nowadays The Sun is frequently the second biggest news website in the UK behind only the BBC in terms of monthly users, although in August it was overtaken by The Guardian.
The Sun’s new registration wall is similar to others run on sites like The Independent.
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