It’s a wrap: Sun sales fall after BSkyB ad

It was a case of unlucky Friday 13 for the Sun as sales dropped by 135,000, potentially due to the combination of a “wrapped” front cover, the first in the newspaper’s history, and a recent 10p price rise.

As the rest of the country has recently become accustomed to the phrase “it never rains but it pours”, so did News International, whose sales for the title dropped by 5.3% to 2.4 million on the day.

BSkyB, which paid around £600,000 for the four page wraparound ad for Sky’s 3D sports coverage, became the first company in the Sun‘s 42-year history to place such an ad in the newspaper.

The only press ad to have cost more than the BSkyB deal occurred in 1996 when Pepsi paid £1 million to change the colour of the Daily Mirror‘s logo from red to blue.

The Sun was all smiles when announcing the deal; chief executive Tom Mockridge said: “The Sun [has] once again set new standards for our industry, having landed one of the biggest deals ever.”

Editor Dominic Mohan approved the ad, but perhaps didn’t envisage the full effect of the loss of the Sun‘s front page on sales figures.

While the impact of the 30p to 40p price rise on the Sun will not be known fully until a few weeks time, the drop of 135,000 could be indicative of the new pricing structure, the wrap ad, or a combination of both factors.

A source at the Sun defended the deal with BSkyB, saying: “For a one-off deal of that size versus losing about 40,000 copies – I’d take it, we all would.”

For the latest ABC newspaper figures, click here.