ABC Jan June 2013 Sunday Newspapers

The Sunday newspaper market dropped 9% or 81,000 copies compared to Jan June 2012. Similar to the morning market the tabloids have taken the brunt of that decline having fallen about 40% since 2005 whereas the non-tabloids have dropped about half of that in the same period.

The Sunday Independent remains the market leader selling 232,000 every Sunday. It dropped 3% on the same period last year and given that the market dipped 9% it, in some respects, outperformed the market.  

It’s followed by the Sunday World at 211,000 having lost 7% or 15,000 year on year. You can see from the individual newspapers graph below that these two papers were ‘nip-and-tuck’ for much of the naughties but the Sunday Independent has now widened its lead to 21,000 over its nearest rival.

As mentioned the tabloids have had a bad twelve months dropping nearly 60,000 collectively or 15% – way ahead of the market fall. Leader in that decline is the Sunday Sun falling 30% or 24,000 copies year on year. The Daily Star dropped 22% but probably doesn’t care as it makes no effort in the market and still manages to sell 22,000 every Sunday (€1.1m at the till)

The Sunday Mirror is down 8,000 copies or 17% and there are 16,000 individuals every Sunday still buying The People. At those levels of sales one would wonder if it worth distributing the paper at all.   

The Sunday Business took centre stage during the year with a high profile examinership and subsequent sale. Sales at the paper dropped close to 3,000 over the year leaving them at 38,000.   

The Mail on Sunday fell 3% to 105,000 and the Sunday Times fell 8% to 98,000. The rest of the papers are too small to worry about.