Tabloid war: Britain’s ‘Sun’ threatens to sue ‘MailOnline’ over allegedly stolen exclusives

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The row between the Sun and the MailOnline revolves around allegedly stolen exclusives, including a Sun original story about shamed footballer Adam Johnson, who is in jail after admitting sexual activity with a 15-year-old girl. Photo: AFP

Published: 1:25pm, 26 Apr 2017Updated: 9:19pm, 26 Apr 2017

Britain’s biggest tabloids are going to war, with the Sun accusing the MailOnline of stealing exclusive content and threatening legal proceedings in a sign of the escalating battle for digital news revenues.

Lawyers at the Sun, still the biggest selling popular newspaper in the UK but with far fewer readers than the MailOnline, sent the letter claiming copyright infringement earlier this week.

The row over the Mail’s alleged misuse of exclusive footage of Adam Johnson, the disgraced footballer in prison for sexually assaulting a 15-year-old fan, and another story about former reality TV star Ferne McCann, comes after Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper group in Australia launched similar legal proceedings two years ago. MailOnline is the website associated with the UK tabloids the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday.

At the heart of the dispute is the attempt to preserve exclusive content as much as possible in order to attract readers. Rival news organisations typically pay a syndication fee along with a link when they use exclusive content.

The Sun remains Britain's most-read newspaper, but its online edition lags far behind rival the MailOnline. Photo: AFP

Since dropping its paywall at the end of 2015, the Sun’s website has doubled its audience year-on-year to 4.5 million average daily unique browsers, according to the latest circulation figures. MailOnline, which has never charged for its content online, attracts three times as many users with 15.5 million in March, higher than the second-placed Guardian at almost 9 million.

With digital advertising revenues falling across the board for newspapers last year, the battle for readers has intensified and the News Corp newspapers are furious at what they have privately called “widespread pilfering”.