This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Media
The Sun will launch paywall in August
By Chris Cooke | Published on Tuesday 14 May 2013
The Sun has announced that it will put a paywall around it’s website on 1 Aug. News International chief Mike Darcey indicated that his company’s tabloid would follow its broadsheet, The Times, down the paywall route at some point this year back in March.
Access to the tabloid’s site will be £2 per week. Incentives that, News International hopes, will persuade subscribers to pay up will include “exclusive offers and promotions” and, perhaps more importantly, Premier League football highlights, which former BSkyB COO Darcey secured exclusive online rights to in a deal back in January.
A number of the UK’s national newspapers are now charging, or moving towards charging, for their web content, after years of offering online news and editorial free of charge. It remains to be seen if the strategy helps reinvigorate the British newspaper sector, that has been struggling for a few years now as print revenues slide but web-based income remains relatively modest, despite most papers boasting much bigger audiences online than they ever did in print.