The Sun has launched a limited paywall charging £1.99 per month for access to some premium online content.
The launch of Sun Club follows a similar move at Mail Online in January 2024 where the number of paying readers has almost hit 130,000. Sky News revealed plans for a similar premium paid online offering last week.
The Sun already asks readers to register with their email address in order to access some content. Columnists such as Jeremy Clarkson will be put behind the paywall as well as “extra content on everything from sports to news, lifestyle and money”.
The Sun said access to royal editor Matt Wilkinson’s previously free Royal Exclusive podcast and Youtube show will now be offered as a subscriber benefit.
Membership of The Sun Club will also give readers access to print subscriber perks and offers such as Sun Hols for £9.50 and Sun Superdays discounted tickets to theme parks.
The Sun told readers: “The Sun is proud to be The People’s Paper and the vast majority of our great stories will still be free to read on our award-winning website.”
Editor-in-chief Victoria Newton said: “From delivering Sun readers world-class journalism driving national conversation, to our famous £9.50 Hols, The Sun has always strived to give readers the very best product on offer.
“Sun Club will help us expand that offer even further.”
The move follows falling website traffic to The Sun website apparently partly in response to the way platforms like Google and Facebook refer people to the site.
In January The Sun was the fourth most popular news website in the UK in December according to Press Gazette’s ranking with 19.5 million readers per month in the UK (down 21% year on year). It was the 11th most-used UK news website in terms of engagement with 287 million monthly minutes (down 20.1% year on year).
Mail Online launched its premium online content scheme Mail+ in January 2024, restricting access to some of its core content areas including its columnists, showbiz, royal, real-life stories, health and personal finance advice. It charges £1.99 per month for the first year, rising to £6.99 per month after a year.
In its latest published accounts, for the year to July 2023, The Sun reported a pre-tax operating loss of £66m on turnover down 3% on a like-for-like basis to £305m.
The publisher said: “In addition, the structural declines in the print market and volatility of social platforms’ approach toward news content negatively impacted both print and digital advertising revenues.”
The Sun no longer publishes a print ABC sales figure. But assuming a rate of sales decline similar to the market-leading Daily Mail average Sun daily print circulation would stand at somewhere between 600,000 and 700,000 copies per day (around half the total of five years ago).
The Sun previously experimented with a full online paywall in 2013 but dropped in two years later. In 2014 The Sun claimed to have more than 200,000 online subscribers paying £7.99 per month.
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