Rupert Murdoch has confirmed on Twitter that the first Sunday edition of the Sun sold 3.26m copies – the biggest sale of a UK newspaper for four years.
"Amazing! The Sun confirmed sale of 3.260,000 copies yesterday," he tweeted at his official @rupertmurdoch account. "Thanks all readers and advertisers. Sorry if sold out – more next time".
The 3.26m has not been bettered on a Sunday since the Sun's now closed sister title News of the World sold 3.37m copies in February 2007. The last time the News of the World equalled 3.26m was in January 2008, according to official figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
Paul Hayes, the managing director of News International's commercial operation, said in an email to media agencies that the sales figure was a "testament I'm sure you will agree to the enduring love affair between our newspaper and the British public".
Media buying agency sources said that the amount of advertising News International's commercial team was able to secure was impressive at such short notice. The Sun on Sunday had nine pages of colour advertising, versus four in the Mail on Sunday and just one in the Sunday Mirror.
"There was a lot of WPP [clients] in it to be fair," said one senior media buying agency executive. WPP handles all of the advertising and media buying for News International, as well as the media buying for BSkyB, which is 39% owned by News International's parent company News Corporation.
"It was launch weekend, there were new introductory offers for advertisers and a week's worth of PR on the BBC and Sky as well as heavy advertising – it was always going to be big," added the source. "Still, it is an impressive start but there is caution among advertisers going forward because of the ongoing [Leveson] inquiry."
Early figures from wholesalers and retailers indicate that sales of the Sun on Sunday's red-top rivals tumbled by between 15% to 30%, with Trinity Mirror's Sunday Mirror and People hit hardest by the new launch.
Early estimates indicate that the People could be down as much as 30% week-on-week to a circulation of about 560,000; while the Sunday Mirror is likely to be down by about a quarter to approximately 1.3m. But both levels are still above the amounts the titles sold before the closure of the News of the World last July – which were 474,000 and 1.09m respectively.
The Sunday Mirror was cut from £1 to 50p in the Carlton (London), Meridian (south coast) and Central (Midlands) regions. Stablemate the People was cut from £1 to 50p in the same regions.
Richard Desmond's Daily Star Sunday, which was cut by 50% to 50p nationally, is on track for a more modest sales decline of the order of 15% to about 550,000. That would leave it almost a quarter of a million ahead of its pre-News of the World closure level, which was 306,000. The Sunday Express looks likely to be down about 10% to approximately 520,000, compared with a circulation of 538,000 before the News of the World closed.
The Mail on Sunday, which maintained its cover price at £1.50, is thought to be on track to report sales up slightly by between 1% and 2%.
The MoS, which ran a major ad campaign over the weekend, cut its price last summer to lure former NoW readers but lost financially when it failed to hold on to temporary sales gains.
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