French newspaper readership is inexorably in decline. In the past year their circulation has slipped again : - 1,26 % for l'Equipe, - 2,41 % for le Figaro et - 3,94 % for le Monde. By comparison, in the UK The Times’ circulation has increased by 7.32% and the London Evening Standard by 3.98%, now selling more copies, 372,955, in the capital than le Figaro does in the whole of France.

United Kingdom daily newspapers outsell the best selling newspapers in France by up to 10 to 1 but while there is no room on the British side of the channel for a sports daily, in France a sports newspaper reigns supreme.

The French daily sports paper, L’Equipe, meaning « the team », sold an average number of 343,567 copies in the year to June 2005, beating le Figaro (326,690) and le Monde (324,401).  By comparison, the sole British sports paper, a weekly called Sport First, sells only 14,289 copies and its circulation has plummeted by exactly one-third in the past twelve months.

Exactly what leaves L’Equipe riding high baffles most foreign journalists reporting on France. « It’s badly written and full of mistakes » said one UK foreign correspondent, « and if you take out cycling, which is not really an international sport, the French have nothing but setbacks to read about. It’s a complete mystery why l’Equipe does so well. »

So far as general newspapers are concerned, however, even if you compare the French papers only with what used to be called the broadsheets in the UK (now themselves reduced to tabloid size or, in the case of the Guardian, a mongrel size known as the Berliner), it seems evident that the French are not a nation of newspaper readers. In July 2005, the directly comparable statistic, in the UK The Times sold 698,043 copies daily and the Telegraph 912,319. In the daily market as a whole, the Mail sold 2,440,601 copies, the Mirror 1,752,948 and the Sun 3,343,486, more than ten times the circulation of le Figaro.


Article from our October 2005 e-newsletter