Taylor Swift’s Eras tour touched down at Wembley Stadium last week as the UK summer finally began. Spotted among the crowds of Swifties were celebrities, including the Starmers – Sir Keir and wife Victoria – to boost reader engagement with Music & Audio, which will grow again with this week’s Glastonbury Festival.

Elsewhere, four weeks on from the General Election announcement, 60.4m Politics page views fell -8% week on week but were still +12% higher than the 2024 weekly average. Further allegations of bets placed by top Tories on the timing of the election saw Gambling topic page views increase by +72%.

UK inflation may have hit the Bank of England’s target of 2% last week but with interest rates held at 5.25% for the seventh consecutive month Brits will continue to struggle with challenging mortgage rates until at least August. Last week, more than 10m Property page views grew by +44%.
Taylor Swift’s all conquering Eras tour hit the UK capital last week with three huge sell-out shows at Wembley stadium. With BF Travis Kelce a surprise on-stage backing dancer, Tay Tay-mania remains sky high. As a result, and with Glastonbury also taking place this week, reader engagement with Music & Audio and Events & Attractions content increased by a tenth and by +4% respectively.

Increased seasonal interest among fashionistas in the style items to save on in the summer sales and Vogue World Paris drove +9% growth for Style & Fashion page views. Notably, the Women’s Accessories (+49%), Men’s Fashion (+35%) and Celebrity Style (+28%) topics all grew.

Members of the public were given the opportunity to grill the party leaders last week. First, Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak separately answered questions from LBC talk radio listeners, then all the party leaders – except Nigel Farage – appeared on a BBC Question Time special. As such, the bigger policy issues, such as Immigration and the Economy, swung back to reader engagement growth, up +8% respectively week on week.
After a tricky week for the Conservative party that saw Labour secure a near record-breaking 20-point lead in at least one opinion poll, our publishers interrogated the feasibility of the Labour’s manifesto pledges, driving some growth in positive sentiment editorial (+1%), but a predominantly negative sentiment increase (+11%).
With the week starting and ending with allegations of improper betting levelled at senior Tory party figures, the attention moved away from the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak’s share of voice fell -6%, while negative sentiment editorial understandably grew (+15%).
Elsewhere, Nigel Farage’s controversial claim that the West provoked the Russian invasion of Ukraine kept the reform leader in the headlines to maintain a 28% share of voice among the party leaders for a third week.

As the election nears, parties looking to maximise the returns of their campaigning have turned their attention to the UK’s marginal constituencies.
Readers within these focus areas – reported by a recent YouGov poll as being constituencies where the percentage difference between the first party and the second party is less than 1% – show signs of being much more likely to be interested in coverage about a broader spectrum of the minor parties compared to those constituencies where perhaps the battle is already won for one major party or another.
Readership analysis of marginal seats reveals an audience more open to engaging with minority parties. For example, the Greens attract more attention in marginal seats across England, out-performing the Lib Dems in North Devon.
Underwhelmed by the main parties, these readers are looking to parties who will focus on local issues, such as Plaid Cymru in Brecon (i212).