The Drum Awards for Marketing - Extended Deadline

-d -h -min -sec

The Sun’s Sunday edition hits a downward spiral to sales of around 2.3 million

By Hamish Mackay

March 21, 2012 | 2 min read

Sales of The Sun’s Sunday edition are on a downward spiral after hitting the 3.22 million mark when it was launched four weeks ago.

According to new industry estimates, the new weekend tabloid dropped a further 300,000 sales at the weekend – taking the circulation to around the 2.3 million mark.

That is about 300,000 fewer copies than the 2.67 million that the News of the World sold when the title closed last July.

Media Guardian reports: “The drop in sales at the weekend will be alarming for News International executives, given that rivals proved to be resilient compared to the previous week. None suffered significant sales drops according to early unofficial sales estimate.

“The strongest performers over the weekend were Trinity Mirror's titles – the and “>Sunday Mirror , “>The People – which avoided entering a costly tabloid price war with the cut-price Sun and yet appear to have seen off the worst of significant sales declines in the weeks after its launch.”

Early estimates put the Sunday Mirror down 1.6% week on week, less than 20,000 copies, to about 1.11 million sales on the weekend.

The People, which suffered the largest initial sales falls when the Sun's Sunday edition launched, lost just 3% of sales at the weekend. This represents just fewer than 15,000 copies to give a sales figure of about 462,000.

The Daily Star on Sunday is thought to have lost just more than 1% of sales week on week - down to 480,000. The paper was selling 306,000 before the closure of the News of The World - making it the biggest gainer over the whole period.

Trending

Industry insights

View all
Add your own content +