Top national newspapers ranked by platform reach UK 2020

The leading newspaper in terms of overall reach in the United Kingdom from April 2019 to March 2020 was The Sun. The tabloid newspaper had a smartphone reach of over 31 million and a total reach of around 38 million individuals that year. The Metro had the highest reach via print, with over 8.7 million individuals per month reading the newspaper, which is distributed for free on public transportation.

News consumption in the UK

Over the past few decades, the UK newspaper industry has visibly struggled due to the proliferation of social media and other digital platforms. As online media delivers regional and international news in real time and around the clock, many print publications have experienced significant readership declines. Between 2005 and 2019, expenditure on newspapers in the UK dropped from 7.2 billion to 2.7 billion British pounds, and according to a 2020 survey, newspapers were a less popular news source in the UK than the internet and television.

Online news are the latest craze

The share of individuals reading or downloading online news, newspapers, and magazines in Great Britain (GB) has steadily increased in recent years. Therefore, many of the UK’s most popular newspapers have moved online to combat dwindling audiences. Today, leading news brands such as The Guardian, The Times, and tabloid publications like The Sun have a significantly higher reach online than via their print editions. Despite this ongoing digitization of the UK print industry, BBC News online remained the leading UK online news brand as of 2020.

Monthly reach of leading national newspapers in the United Kingdom from April 2019 to March 2020, by platform (in 1,000s)

Characteristic	Phone	Tablet	Desktop	Print
The Sun /The Sun on Sunday	31,667	3,211	4,613	6,378
Daily Mail / The Mail On Sunday	29,291	2,518	5,813	5,755
Daily Mirror / Sunday Mirror / Sunday People	27,436	3,146	3,694	2,814
The Guardian / The Observer	21,063	1,796	6,554	2,599
Independent	23,521	2,099	4,365	-
Daily Express / Sunday Express	21,474	2,155	4,792	1,359
Metro	20,733	1,655	2,065	8,748
The Daily Telegraph / The Sunday Telegraph	16,964	1,886	4,999	2,235
Evening Standard	8,864	1,007	1,320	3,612
The Times / The Sunday Times	11,371	2,286	1,224	2,905
Daily Star / Daily Star Sunday	10,329	930	765	1,262
Daily Record / Sunday Mail (Scotland)	6,704	673	660	673

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Release date

March 2021

More information

Region

United Kingdom

Survey time period

April 2019 to March 2020

Age group

15 years and above

Supplementary notes

PAMCo 1 2021: April ’19 – Mar ’20 print data fused with November ’20 Comscore data. The daily print figure is the daily reach of the 6-day paper (i.e. everyone who has read it 'yesterday') which can be different from the modelled 6-day AIR.

Where a single title had multiple websites, only the highest reaching title(s) were included here. See the source for the web addresses of each title.

For more information on the methodology of this survey click here.

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