How The Daily Star sports section is ‘more fun than The Sun’

The Daily Star’s online sports section increased its page views in March 2022 by 300% year-on-year, according to Google Analytics.

The same figures showed total page views for The Star’s digital sports content will beat 2021’s figure for the entire year by tomorrow.

The Daily Star also produced Ipsos Iris results for May 2022 which revealed the Reach-owned paper’s site traffic had grown 30% year-on-year, while many other titles were in decline over the same period.

Jon Livesey, deputy editor-in-chief for digital, tells The Media Leader, that sport, without doubt, has accelerated growth quicker than any other section at The Daily Star, which can be attributed to a shift in its strategy going back to 2019/2020.

He says: “This formula is really two-pronged: a focus on injecting the personality and being brand-led, but also following the numbers and the data.”

Livesey explains The Daily Star brand is built on three pillars: fun, cheeky, and irreverent, something which puts them in “a unique position” compared to their competitors like The Sun.

“One of the lines that we use is ‘more fun than The Sun’ because I think looking back a little bit, The Sun was more of a traditional red-top tabloid, but I think it’s changed a little bit in recent years, and we identified an opportunity, a gap there really to be filled: the brand bringing the fun and being more irreverent,” he remarks.

Hard news and showbiz through a ‘cheeky’ sports angle

The Daily Star’s digital sports team took this “irreverent” approach not only to “traditional” sports content like football matches, but also to write about big topical stories like so-called “hard news”, culture, and showbiz through a “cheeky” sports angle.

Livesey adds: “It’s about putting everything through that lens and looking for opportunities to inject that personality into content, and we weren’t doing that in sport, particularly, it was more traditional sport content, and we gave the digital sport team carte blanche to experiment with ideas and inject personality and attitude into the content and into the voice and to be fair to them they have stepped up and delivered more than we could have hoped.”

So instead of traditional match reports, the team thinks “laterally” around big news stories like Boris Johnson’s vote-of no-confidence and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and find “a sports way in”, comparing the Prime Minister’s vote-of-no-confidence to football managers being given a similar unofficial vote of no confidence by players and Putin’s secret lover being a gymnast.

This sports content may not be what is traditionally expected from a publication like The Daily Star, but is “absolutely data-led” with the team analysing data from page views, engagement time, recirculation, and more from other sections to find what to write about.

Diversifying sports coverage outside football to reach new audiences

The Daily Star digital sports team also expanded the sports it covered as they saw a gap in the market, alongside a push on long-form original, native video and social content, and launching a newsletter for all non-football sports called Off The Ball.

Jake Murtagh, head of national sport, digital, covering The Daily Star, The Daily Mirror, and The Express remarks: “Traditionally, we used to be predominately focused on football, now we’ve branched out into UFC, boxing, darts, and Formula One, and again, it’s just offering the audience and the readers something different with a unique take on things, whether it’s a moment in the crowd, something off camera that perhaps viewers at home may not have seen from a live event, like a pitch invader or things like that.”

Murtagh gives an example from the last week; a piece about Andy Murray’s underarm serve in his Wimbledon match against John Isner, chosen since that what was being spoken about on social media, compared to a more “standard” write-up of the game.

He added they are even moving away from traditional sports and writing about YouTube fights and TikTok new-to-boxing events to help grow a younger audience.

This content strategy looks to bring in loyal readers who are not just a specific sports fan, or even a general sports fan, but a non-sports fan, Livesey and Murtagh stress.

“In terms of the profile of people, this project has massively been about widening that audience. We would never set out specifically to target let’s say, more female readers, but by doing more content with a lifestyle element or a celebrity element, I think a by-product of that is that you will almost certainly grow your female audience as well,” Livesey adds.

A focus on long-form and video content to reach new audiences

One could ask if this “fun” approach trivialises the news, but Livesey says The Daily Star’s digital long-form sports content, articles more than 500 words, are proving to be be very popular with many of them appearing in their top 50 most-read lists with long dwell times.

Murtagh also comments: “Our focus on longer-form content and features, that’s a big part of what we do. So for example, if there was a manager or sacking or signing in football, we will do a spin-off of 10 worst signings or that kind of thing and for every kind of big event as well. We will have pre-planned content and regular meetings to ensure that we’re producing longer form content around all of the big events.”

The Daily Star digital sports team has also been building its presence on TikTok through FIFA and e-sport content, alongside native video and memes on Instagram and shareable links on Facebook

Livesey says: “In terms of audience we obviously want them to be a nice balance of traffic sources, so we want people to be coming from social media streams. We want as many as possible to be direct- that’s the dream. If we can make Daily Star a destination for more people or their habit, that’s ideal. So we want to spread search, social, referral, direct, and if we get an even share, or, heavily weighted towards direct — brilliant.”

So what’s next for The Daily Star?

Livesey describes how the digital sport section has been used as “the example” to other sections to show how to get “the biggest results” if they absolutely focus their energy on being personality and brand-led with a unique tone of voice.

He concludes: “Those sections have been encouraged to follow sports. Our digital sports are leading the way in that respect.”