From the FT to The Guardian, UK Publications Find Success in U.S. Expansion

UK publications are increasingly looking to the United States for their growth, even as U.S. media is persistently characterized as a dying industry.

Still, the opportunities are vast: the country boasts the world’s biggest economy and the highest average household net adjusted disposable income per capita in the OECD. The percentage of 25- to 34-year-olds with a postsecondary degree increased by 13 percentage points between 2000 and 2022, reaching 51% compared to the OECD average in 2022 of 47%. 

But the news business is also in decline and Americans are already inundated with information, content, news, podcasts, videos and more from around the world. AMO spoke to three very different UK publishers about their reasons behind pushing into the U.S. and what the reception’s been so far. 

One landed about 18 months ago, another has been around for about 13 years and the third opened in 1997, and has spent the past few years making an even more concerted effort to expand its reach in the country. The outlook for all is pretty darn good. 

Reach PLC

Michael Cascio, managing director U.S., joined January 2024

Reach PLC owns more than 120 brands in the UK. With two of their biggest, The Mirror and Express, they noticed a few years ago that 15% to 20% of traffic was coming from the U.S. A move into the country seemed like an obvious next step.

Why are Americans reading The Mirror and Express, tabloid publications that cover celebrity, crime and sports when they’re already well-served by the likes of TMZ, People and US Magazine? 

Thank the British royal family and English Premier League football, aka soccer.  

Reach entered the U.S. 18 months ago with the Irish Star, aiming to reach the 31.5 million Americans of Irish heritage with a focus on golf and Irish celebrities and sports figures like Conor McGregor. Express and The Mirror followed a couple of months later.  

“The reception has been very, very positive. We’ve been ahead of our growth targets, although it’s certainly not without its challenges,” Cascio said.

Reach is reaching 6 million to 8 million people a day across various platforms, and around 3 million to 4 million a day directly.

Reach, which has about 60 staff members on editorial, has focused on content distribution, ensuring that it is building a strong social following and engaging that audience with themes and topics where they want to establish authority and expertise.

That included leaning into Reddit, a prescient move given how Google search results now often surface answers from the social media site. 

We’ve had a lot of success with Reddit. We also have done a very good job distributing our content across aggregators and syndication partners like NewsBreak, SmartNews and MSN and really understanding what the off platform audience is looking for and how we can use an effective link strategy to drive traffic back from those platforms to the websites themselves.

I’m very proud to say that the US is leading, is kind of leading the charge internally at reach in terms of Reddit, and we think that there’s a lot of continued growth opportunity there. We’ve hosted a couple of amas, and are looking at ways that we can do more with that community next year.

Late last year, the U.S. became a sustainable investment even amid a challenging ad market. The company is planning additional hires and expansion in 2025, including in video and podcasts. Growth will center around sports given the upcoming World Cup being held in part in the U.S., as well as the West Coast for celebrity coverage and helping cover the full news day.

It’s not just British expertise, however, that’s helping Reach grow its reputation in the U.S. They hired a reporter with women’s college basketball expertise to cover sports and started writing about Caitlin Clark right as she was becoming very popular.

“We were able to carry that through right into the WNBA after she was drafted. So we’ve seen a tremendous amount of success around women’s basketball, which is not something that we had any history of back in the UK,” he said.

Like all publishers, Cascio is concerned over being one algorithm change away from the bottom.

“Everyone in publishing worries about not being fully in control of their own destiny,” Cascio said. “Traffic diversification is so important to us and why we’re trying to really make sure that we are doing well with search, social, Reddit, WhatsApp, and finding as many ways to connect with our audience, so that we can weather any types of volatility.”

They are also working on bringing their audience back to the site and monetizing them directly, with newsletters a major area of focus for next year.

“We’re a little bit of a bright spot in media right now,” Cascio said. “I’m really proud of the way that we’ve managed to find audience and really focus on getting the basics right, to build some new properties from scratch, essentially.”

The Guardian 

Jane Spencer, deputy editor and head of strategy, Guardian US

The Guardian has been in the U.S. for over a decade, differentiating itself by providing a worldwide perspective on U.S. news—think Donald Trump and the global rise of authoritarian-style leaders—the aftershocks of U.S. policy in the world—like human migration—and international news to Americans—like the war in Ukraine.

“So that is a huge point of differentiation and a huge source of our value to Americans is our global perspective,” Spencer told AMO. “It’s both the way we cover U.S. News and the way we cover international news.”

Over the past year, the company has researched what its audience sees as its points of differentiation and that includes its global perspective and the open and free model. In 2016, it started asking readers to make voluntary contributions rather than putting up a paywall. 

“A big message of ours during the election was democracy shouldn’t require a paywall. It’s actually a public service to make fact based, high quality information free and accessible to the public and that’s a huge point of differentiation, and something we hear that our readers and supporters value about The Guardian,” Spencer said.

“It’s worked incredibly well, but it worked better than anyone expected in the US, where we were relatively new, where our audience tends to be a bit less loyal than our audience in the UK, where we’ve been established for 200 years. But there’s just a culture of philanthropic giving and supporting causes that people believe in the U.S. that the Guardian was able to tap into,” Spencer said.

The Guardian is owned by the Scott Trust and is perceived to be independent when the press comes under attack and there are threats to democracy, “The Guardian’s message has really resonated in this market. So we’re very committed to keeping the site open for you all, and we find that that’s one of the reasons people value us and support us financially.”

Since October 25, which was when the Washington Post pulled their Kamala Harris endorsement, The Guardian in the U.S. has raised over $10 million from supporters. 

In the fiscal year ending in April 2024, more than 430,000 people in the U.S. gave voluntary donations to the Guardian, generating nearly $33M in revenue.  Globally, digital reader revenue—the category most comparable to US reader revenue—was £88.2 million. 

With three months left in the current fiscal year, the publication projects a significantly higher number of donors and donations for the U.S. To date, it is at almost 440,000 donors in the current fiscal year.

Last fiscal year, which ended in April, the U.S. generated just over $52 million in revenue and globally, the Guardian brought in £257.8 million. Net contribution, their term for profitability, from the U.S. was $15.9 million. Globally, the Guardian had a cash outflow of £36.5 million. 

The Guardian US, with a staff of more than 100 journalists, has between 40 million and 50 million unique visitors a month.

Like all publications, though, the Guardian US isn’t immune to a drop in traffic from Google and fortunately didn’t depend heavily on social media for readership. And on a positive note, it is seeing a bump from Apple News, which has helped traffic levels.

But as a result, the publication has invested deeply in its U.S. newsletters, where the audience has grown 76% this year. 

They have also launched new verticals to diversify U.S. content beyond news, covering soccer, wellness and more. It’s also looking to hire reporters in areas where the Trump administration will have a lot of impact on communities and people, like in California.  

One key reason the Guardian has also done well in the U.S. is the voice of British journalists. 

“British journalists are often just really sharp about headlines and packaging and framing,” Spencer said. “There’s a culture of British journalism that’s less stiff that translated really well, both to the internet and Americans.”

Financial Times

Matt Fottrell, president, US of the Financial Times

The Financial Times has had a U.S. presence for decades, going back to 1997. But about six years ago, it really started investing and looking to launch new products with new journalists in the country.

In fact, owner Nikkei has provided an innovation fund worth millions to try new things specifically in the U.S. first, “our thinking being that’s a huge market, it’s really exciting, very competitive, also, it’s so innovative,” Fottrell said. “Our key goal was to try and increase the penetration amongst the U.S. audiences, and actually, particularly, to drive engagement.” 

The UK and the U.S. global pay audiences each represent about 40% of total audience today, with total global paid subscriptions at 2.8 million. The FT has also seen engagement in the States increasing over the past few years. According to a Companies House filing, North American revenue totaled £98 million of overall revenue of £443 million in 2023. 

Why are they succeeding thus far? 

“We have this image of what we call the global mind of Americans, so the people who are working in politics, business, finance, international industries that have a need to know how America fits into everything,” Fottrell said. “They’re also very interested in an unbiased view on what’s happening in America.”  

During U.S. elections, the FT sees a spike in U.S. readership, which Fottrell attributes to a trust Americans have in a publication that is seen as a credible source that doesn’t carry a lot of baggage. 

“What’s delightful is actually our U.S. content massively over indexes with American readers,” Fottrell said. “We’re absolutely thrilled with our progress, but also really committed to trying to do more here.”  

The Financial Times has been expanding its Washington team and reopened the Los Angeles bureau, where they launched an event this year.

The FT is thriving even as its prices tend to be higher than its U.S. competitors. A standard digital subscription costs $45 a month while a premium subscription costs $75 a month. By comparison, the Wall Street Journal’s top subscription costs $45 a month.

“What we have found with our B2C subscriptions actually is that Americans are happy to pay for quality journalism,” Fottrell said. He estimates the FT has the highest average revenue per user in America of any region, some 10 to 15 times as much for other quality titles. 

While the FT is pleased with the results it has so far, its continuing to focus on growing its audience. 

“Really pleased to say our brand awareness is at its highest as it has been, but it’s still got quite a way to go until we get to UK and European levels,” Fottrell said.