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 the publisher’s marketing and customer service teams for other tasks.
Hedge fund manager Sir Paul Marshall bough The Spectator for £100m from the Barclay family in September 2004 and promised to invest in the title,
“When we first walked into The Spectator, it was a very traditional media setup, relying on an old legacy bureau to do everything from label runs to customer service,” said Seb Giraud, chief operating officer of The Spectator and CEO of CO-Editor.
The Spectator was “encumbered” with old tech, he added. Co-Editor reduced the subscription checkout process from seven minutes to around one minute for The Spectator by cutting out email verification and account set up.
In addition to targeting new subscribers with a quicker sign-up process, Co-Editor aims to retain existing subscribers by changing the exit process.
Old subscription technology meant if a customer turned off their auto-renew subscription, The Spectator was not notified for nine days.
“The Spectator would have no idea that you were about to churn as a subscriber,” said Giraud. Now, Co-Editor “immediately” sends “win-back comms”.
“Our team here in the UK will give you a ring, email you. It’s a whole structured path to win you back and to be able to re-engage you,” he added. “It’s all part of a one-stop shop to try and combat churn and win people as quickly as possible.”
Some customer service functions have also been automated by AI, so subscribers can change delivery addresses and subscription plans without human involvement.
FT Strategies was commissioned by Co-Editor and Stripe Billing to assess the difference in operational costs of the new subscriptions and it predicted savings of £500,000 a year.
Notes: Data from September 24 – Aug 25. 1) Previous provider pricing was structured as £0.11 per recurring transaction, £0.25 per acquisition transaction, 2.5% of acquisition transaction value, and 0.72% per transaction through WorldPay. Stripe pricing is structured as £0.20 per transaction plus 0.30% of transaction value. 2) Customer service costs reflect the full salaries of four internal staff (two more than previously), whose roles now cover multiple titles, plus overheads of 45%. 3) Additional bureau costs include categories such as products, web services and email.
As well as Stripe Billing, Co-Editor incorporates existing Spectator customer service operations, Customer.io for marketing automation, Piano for access management and Mailchimp for email marketing.
“Because… so many human beings have to be involved to do these very simple things… we were paying so much money to these bureaus… so we’ve been able to eradicate a huge amount of cost as well deliver better service, have a better data flow, and also look after the customers ourselves,” said Giraud.
“So it’s a huge amount of money invested, but also a huge amount of monthly costs saved.”
Helping other titles ‘return to profitability’ with Co-Editor
Co-Editor has partnered with other titles owned by Paul Marshall’s company OQS Media, which bought The Spectator in 2024. This includes The Spectator’s sister title, art magazine Apollo, and online magazine Unherd .
Freddie Sayers, CEO of OQS Media and editor-in-chief of Unherd, said: “We felt that if we got it right for our own internal publications, we could offer it elsewhere, and that’s what we’re now doing.”
Sayers added it’s an “opportunity” for quality publications that are “needlessly losing people, and we think we can help their businesses return to profitability”.
“The number of inbound inquiries has been amazing,” he said, adding they have seen these from the UK, Middle East and Europe.
Co-Editor can also be offered as parts, such as just its customer service platform or subscriptions payments mechanism.
The biggest change with The Spectator’s adoption of Co-Editor is the title owning its subscriber base, said Sayers, with “direct and immediate contact with our own subscribers”.
Given that subscriptions are “the overwhelming source of revenue” for the title, this has been a priority for The Spectator’s reinvestment in itself.
Marshall said he was committed to fix underinvestment when he bought the magazine in 2024.
“Co-Editor is part of that investment, obviously, and that’s plugging a big hole,” said Sayers.
The Spectator last posted its financials in 2023, reporting £19.2m in turnover alongside losses of £6.9m . Its accounts for the year to December 2024 are currently overdue.
“If we end the year successfully taken on a good number of additional publications, and we’re delivering value for them and seeing a turnaround in their subscriber numbers, we’ll be really happy,” said Sayers.
Expansion of US reach
The Spectator’s US arm “is growing very nicely”, said Sayers. Expansion of US reach was a priority for OQS when it took over the title in 2024, with The Spectator having launched a US website six years earlier in 2018, appointing Freddy Gray as its USA editor .
The US iteration was originally launched as a separate publication but it has now been “reconnected with the mothership”, said Sayers.
“So, it just felt like we would have better chance of success to be a linked up global publication, more along the lines of The Economist,” he added. “The last couple of years, it’s been roughly occasional declines in terms of our US subscriber base. And since around the middle of last year, it’s just a straight line upwards. I’m not even sure we’ve had a single week of net-losing subscribers. We haven’t done a huge expansion and hired 100 people…but it’s already paying dividends”
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