Roy Morgan figures show The West Australian reaches 500,000 readers every Saturday

The astonishing growth of The West Australian and The Sunday Times has been highlighted in the latest Roy Morgan figures that show thousands more people are reading the newspapers compared with a year ago.

The West Australian Saturday edition has reached half a million average issue readers and has seen a growth of 40,000 new readers year-on-year, the best result in the last four years.

Additionally, The West Australian Mon-Fri average day has also seen a surge of 8,000 new readers year-on-year to their average of 358,000 readers.

The Sunday Times has also seen an increase of 58,000 new readers year-on-year to their well-established average base of 419,000 readers every Sunday.

Year-on year, women, key decision makers on household purchases and the sought-after 30-44’s age group, are driving print growth across all three mastheads.

Brent Stewart, The West Australian’s Chief Sales Officer, said: “This growth demonstrates even more opportunity for our advertisers to connect with key consumer markets.”

“Notably we’ve seen strong lifts among female readers and the high value 30-44’s age group.”

The results have shown that The West Australian has the highest state market reach among the nation’s major weekday and Saturday mastheads, and the second highest in Australia for The Sunday Times.

Furthermore, The West Australian brand group has 3.7 million cross-platform readers each month, the highest cross-platform reach of any major national masthead.

Topical sections continue to engage readers with The West’s dedicated AFL sections showing the strongest growth over the quarter. The Pre-Game readership has increased by 19,000 new readers or +16.9% followed by The Game receiving an increase of 7,000 new readers or +6.6%.

The data also shows more West Australians are reading The West’s, Play, and The Sunday Times, STM, magazines are ranking in the top five most-read magazines among West Australians. These magazines are delivering audiences at scale every week. The readership of Play has increased by 21,000 or +9.4%, over the year and STM has increased by 20,000 readers or +8.1%.

West Australian Newspapers editor-in-chief Anthony De Ceglie said the readership growth came on the back of hard work across all the newsrooms, innovation and top-quality journalism.

“The growth of the Saturday edition of The West Australian and The Sunday Times in particular is really exciting,” he said.

“And, crucially, during the weekday The West Australian remains easily the newspaper with the highest market penetration of any masthead in the country.

“In many cases, our market penetration is double that of our peers in other states.”