All posts tagged: Spectator

Spectator made £6.6m loss in year Paul Marshall paid £100m for title

Spectator made £6.6m loss in year Paul Marshall paid £100m for title

Published by Sam Flores

The Spectator composite image. Picture: OQS Media The 15-month sale process of The Spectator resulted in total costs to the weekly news magazine of £11.4m. The Spectator was bought by GB News investor and hedge fund manager Sir Paul Marshall via his company Old Queen Street Ventures Ltd in September 2024. In the 2023 financial year, the sale process cost The Spectator £6.4m. New accounts on Companies House now show a further £5m cost in the year to 31 December 2024. These costs included receivers, independent directors, bankers, lawyers, consultants and employee retention payments. They were paid by the prior owners before the OQS acquisition completed. The sale meant The Spectator fell into the red following a pre-tax profit of £2.6m in 2022, its last full year of Barclay family ownership. In 2024, The Spectator reported a pre-tax loss of £6.6m, slightly improved from a loss of £6.9m in 2023. EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation) excluding exceptional items was a small loss of £0.2m following a profit of £1.2m in 2023. Turnover …

How The Spectator invested £1m in building own subs platform

How The Spectator invested £1m in building own subs platform

Published by Sam Flores

The Spectator composite image. Picture: OQS Media The Spectator has invested £1m in a new technology platform which it says helped it to an all-time high subscribers total. In 2025, the publisher’s digital subscriptions grew by 4.3% to 47,576 and print sales rose 2.7% to 56,152 giving it a total weekly sale of 103,728 (excluding its Australia and American editions), according to latest ABC figures. It follows the title blaming an 8% drop in turnover to £19.2m largely on “difficulties with a subscription technology platform migration” in 2023. Now, the title has attributed its growth in both print and digital readers to Co-Editor, an in-house subscriptions platform that is now a core part of Spectator owner Old Queen Street Ventures Limited (OQS Media)’s technology stack. It has made the subscriber sign-up process more efficient with an aim to reduce churn. Since Co-Editor launched in June 2025, The Spectator has seen combined print and digital subscribers rise from 94,000 to 103,000. US subscriptions have risen from 14,000 to more than 16,000. The platform also frees up …

New subs technology helps Spectator reach 198-year sales high

New subs technology helps Spectator reach 198-year sales high

Published by Sam Flores

Spectator front page The Spectator was the only current affairs magazine audited by ABC to grow both print and digital sales in 2025 – rising to the highest total sale in its 198-year history. Meanwhile, Private Eye remains the biggest selling UK current affairs title with fortnightly sales of 225,642 (down 3.1% year on year). The Economist remains a global journalism success story with worldwide sales up 1.2% to 981,746. Scroll down for full table listing UK current affairs magazine sales in 2026. Due to changes in ABC regulations, many publications boosted their totals by being allowed to count readers who receive both print and digital editions of publications twice in the overall circulation total. This was not the case for The Spectator (which de-dupes print and digital readers) or The Economist (its 981,746 digital subscriptions total includes those who also receive the print edition). Private Eye does not have a digital edition. Circulations have also been boosted for some titles (not The Spectator or The Economist) by readership on “all you can read” Spotify-style …

Are you a Spectator? – OpentheWord.org

Are you a Spectator? – OpentheWord.org

Published by Sam Flores

So, in religion, where are you, and where am I? Are we spectators or participants? … Believers or casual participants? The real question is, what is religion, really? Humans have argued and fought wars over religion, but we should know; what are we arguing and fighting about, really? Recently, we visited a church that we don’t belong to. The speaker was someone who I would describe as a friendly acquaintance, and if we had the time, we could possibly become friends. Something in that other church bothered me, but I don’t want to be too critical. I think they are a congregation of good people. The speaker, at the was very educated and intelligent. I think he could easily become a professor in a Seminary or a Bible College. He had so much to say, that we missed our coffee break, and then went into overtime, at the end. We had a question and discussion time, at the end, and I think we were all tired. Only one person had a question, and it was …