Evening Standard’s print future in doubt after Indy digital takeover

The Independent’s takeover of the Evening Standard’s online and commercial operations highlights the struggle of the UK newspaper industry to attract advertising revenue, analysts say.

“Newspapers are a cover price and subscriptions business these days,” said one. “The only way most have avoided revenue dips is cover price hikes, and people don’t subscribe online to newspapers they get for free in the real world.”

The licensed deal, announced last week, will take place in March and leaves the Standard with a print-only team of about 25, down from 75. Staff have been offered voluntary redundancy and been given a deadline of Monday to decide. Only 38 will transfer to the Independent.

The Standard has struggled since the pandemic and the rollout of 4G and 5G mobile phone signals on the London Underground. The paper made an operating loss of £18.7m in 2024, up from £18.4m the previous year, and has been propped up by shareholder loans of £23m in 2024, up from £21m. A move from daily evening paper to a weekly print magazine in 2024 is said to have halved losses.

Independent Media will run the Standard as a discrete website alongside the Independent and the group’s expanding digital business. The company licensed BuzzFeed and HuffPost in the UK in 2024, as well as BuzzFeed’s sub-brands Tasty UK and black British brand Seasoned, and has made them profitable.

“There never really seemed to be a clear digital strategy at the Standard, with traffic largely driven by Google News and Discover and often by sport-led spikes around clubs like Arsenal and Chelsea,” said Abi Watson at Enders Analysis.

“Folding the Standard’s digital operations into the Independent looks less like a sudden strategic pivot and more like a formal acknowledgement of where the economics now sit.

While London is “underserved” for local news, Watson says many community titles and small independents are “thriving” in the capital, particularly those focused on local politics and neighbourhood issues.

But broad, ad-funded, generalist London news at digital scale looks much harder to sustain.”

Independent Media and the Standard are both majority owned by Evgeny Lebedev, son of the Russian oligarch and former KGB agent Alexander. Sultan Muhammad Abuljadayel, a Saudi-based investor, holds a minority stake in both. The Daily Mail and General Trust owns a 5% stake in the Standard and entrepreneur Justian Byam Shaw owns 26% of the Independent.

“I don’t think Evgeny wants to be the person who closes the Standard as it approaches its 200th anniversary, since it earned him his seat in the Lords,” says one former senior staffer.

Lebedev was made a baron in 2020 by Boris Johnson for services to the media industry, after he and his father bought the Standard for £1 in 2009 and the Independent the following year, just before it closed. The source said Lebedev’s right-wing views “dominated the paper and [are] not reflective of the way most Londoners vote”.

“One open question is what this means for the coherence of the Standard as a product,” added Watson. “With digital effectively moving elsewhere while print continues as a separate entity, there’s a real risk that the two become increasingly disjointed.”