Guardian +15% in US
The increasingly global Guardian’s latest financials show it had 2025-6 revenue of £282mn (2024-5: £276mn), propelled by 17% growth in digital reader revenue to £126mn. US revenue was up 15% to £64mn. International revenue increased 8% to £115mn, comprising 41% of the total. It now has over 500k “recurring supporters”. (donors and/or subscribers) in the US, 36% of the global total. The 2025-6 net result was a deficit of £17mn, funded by the owning charity’s £1.3bn endowment. According to Comscore, The Guardian – two-thirds of whose digital audience is now outside the UK – is the world’s fifth most visited online news site, is in the top 10 in the US and in the top five or above in the UK, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Spain and Italy. Background.
- Manta Media Capital, the newly-launched ‘event industry venture builder and investor’, has acquired shareholdings in its first two businesses as the start of a wider programme which will see a total of six investments completed during the next month. It has taken a 25% stake in the five-year-old Party Action People, of Singapore, organizer of finance events. It has also taken a 50% stake in Global Engage’s 12-year-old Digital Pathology + AI European event, which will now trade independently as DigiPath. Manta founder Toby Duckworth promises “real support, not just capital” for companies in which it invests. Background.
- Smooth Media, the US-based, five-year-old agency which represents some 70 newsletter creators, has given one of them – Cat Goetze (known online as CatGPT) – an equity stake and role as strategic adviser. She’s the first outside shareholder in Smooth which was founded and bootstrapped by ex Morning Brew executives Josh Kaplan and Jenny Rothenberg. (Axios)
- Washington Post claims it will breakeven in 2026 after four years of losses. The news brand laid-off 300 of its 800 journalists in February. (FT)
- New York Times-owned sports news site The Athletic has reportedly withdrawn plans for a sports betting or prediction-market partnership with Kalshi, in the US, following pushback from staff. (NY Post)
- Daily Mail US is launching a video division, New Media, featuring a roster of creator-led social video franchises using in-house editorial talent. It’s a model imported from the UK, which, after its first year, has grown to over 100 staff and produces videos that each claim to average around 300k views. Social video currently represents roughly 20% of all direct advertising revenue at the Daily Mail. (Adweek)
- Goalhanger, the £60mn-revenue, UK-based podcast producer now claims more than 250k subscribers paying £60. Last weekend, it sold 26,000 tickets (totalling an estimated £120k) to 22 live shows at its “The Rest is Fest” at London’s Royal Festival Hall and Southbank Centre. Background
- Meanwhile, six miles across the UK capital in leafy Hampstead, the Financial Times was celebrating the 10th anniversary of its FT Weekend Festival. It attracted 3,700 people paying c£200 to engage with FT journalists , authors and cultural celebs in the grounds of the 17th century Kenwood House. The tickets, mostly bought at a discount by subscribers to the FT and its acclaimed Weekend edition, probably accounted for almost 50% of the £1.7mn revenue; champagne, banking and consulting sponsors did the rest. Background
- “The Atlantic is a rare case of a magazine brand that’s modernized and become a stronger business. And it did that not by excelling at growth hacks or spinning up GLP-1 affiliate pages but by building an audience-focused business with distinctive journalism at its core – and a talent focus, as seen in its regular poaching of top talent, including David Brooks from The New York Times and several top Washington Post journalists. Underpinning that is an audience revenue business with 1 million paid subscriptions.” (Brian Morrissey)
