Nine Publishing hikes digital subscription prices by 20%
Nine Publishing has increased the price of its digital subscriptions for the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Brisbane Times, and WA Today. It is the second year in a row it has hiked prices at the end of June.
A digital subscription for any of the four mastheads has now risen from $21.49 a month, to $25.99 – a 21% hike.
An email sent from the Herald to subscribers detailing the price rise doesn’t give a reason, but states: “Your ongoing commitment enables our Sydney newsroom to produce the reliable, accurate, high-quality journalism The Sydney Morning Herald has delivered since 1831.”
For $37.49 a month (an extra $11.50) subscribers of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age can also leap to ‘premium’ and get access to the recently launched Good Food app, a suite of puzzle games, and popular US sports news site The Athletic, part of the New York Times stable. The Athletic costs $3 a month as a standalone subscription, and was added to Nine’s premium offering last month. The Good Food app is also available separately for $12 a month.
Nine Publishing
At the digital-only cost, Nine’s city-based mastheads are still a deal cheaper than its prestige publication, the Australian Financial Review, which costs $64.80 a month for a digital subscription.
Nine’s papers are also cheaper than News Corp’s paywalled daily mastheads, which have also recently risen in price.
Last October, News Corp increased the digital subscription cost for its daily mastheads — The Daily Telegraph, Courier Mail, and Herald Sun — from $28 a month, to $32. The previous week it increased the digital subscription cost of its national masthead The Australian from $40 a month to $48 a month. The reason given to readers for these increases was “to ensure we provide you with an unmatched news experience.”
Seven West Media’s The West Australian also cost $32 per month for a digital subscription that also offers access to SWM’s suite of 18 regional publications.
Elsewhere, a monthly digital subscription to the UK’s Financial Times website costs $65, while ACM’s suite of regional papers — which includes dailies like The Canberra Times, Illawarra Mercury, Newcastle Herald, and the Courier — cost $19.90 a month for a digital sub.
Crikey also sells for $19.90 a month. In investigating pricing, Mumbrella came across evidence of News Corp’s continuing fixation with Crikey — see the Google Ad Word hijacking below.
Crikey, that’s the Oz!
It also bears noting that most of the above mastheads are currently running EOFY specials that (temporarily) more than offset the price increases seen over the past 12 months.
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Nathan Jolly is the Features Editor at Mumbrella. He joined the team in July, 2023.
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It should come as no surprise that media companies announce price increases at the end of financial year in order that they can put in a full year of revenue into their accounts for the next financial year. If they did it at Christmas, they would only have six months at the new price you see.
A lot of companies seem to exclude customers who have less than six months tenure from price rises, so it is possible to cancel and resubscribe at the right time of year to avoid that years price rise.
Are Nine mastheads value at the new price? I don’t know, I wouldn’t have read them at the old price…..but I can say I would definitely prefer to spend the money on Max, or Disney……
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