The Sun introduces monthly membership fee for Clarkson columns and exclusive content

The Sun, Britain’s highest-circulation tabloid, is rolling out a new subscription service—dubbed “Sun Club”—priced at £1.99 a month.

Launching on Tuesday, it will charge readers for selected star columns, including those by Jeremy Clarkson, as well as popular features such as the “Dear Deidre” agony aunt and exclusive investigations.

The move marks the publisher’s return to a paid-content strategy a decade after scrapping its previous paywall in December 2015, when it was deemed to have cut The Sun’s overall digital audience too sharply. This time, the partial paywall aims to capitalise on in-demand content by hosting exclusive videos, alongside contributions from other high-profile columnists like Rod Liddle, Loose Women’s Jane Moore and political editor Harry Cole.

The new Sun Club membership also offers access to long-running deals, such as the “Holidays from £9.50” promotion—until now restricted to print buyers and app subscribers. Editor-in-chief Victoria Newton said: “The Sun has always offered readers more than a paper. Sun Club will help us expand our offer to audiences even further.”

The decision follows similar moves by rival publishers, such as the Daily Mail, which introduced its own paid online service—Mail+—starting at £4.99 a month in early 2024. With increasing downward pressure on print revenues and uncertainty in advertising markets, The Sun is hoping that targeted paid content will help generate a new source of digital income while retaining its core readership.

Previously, The Sun pioneered a full paywall in August 2013, leveraging Premier League football highlights to boost uptake. However, despite attracting around 200,000 paying subscribers, the publication abandoned the model in favour of reaching a wider free audience amid competition from competitors like MailOnline. The reintroduction of subscriptions suggests a recalibration, underlining the continued challenges facing UK newspapers in the search for sustainable business models.

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The Sun introduces monthly membership fee for Clarkson columns and exclusive content