Sales for Afrikaans newspaper Rapport increased by nearly seven percent on Sunday after the Blue Bulls won the Super 14 final.
‘It was definitely our best Sunday of the year so far,” says senior circulation manager Gerhard Wentzel.
‘We always sell more copies when the Bulls and Stormers win a game. It has a much bigger impact on our sales than when the Cheetahs, Lions or Sharks win a game,” he adds.
Unaudited figures show that Rapport sold 6.89 percent better than on a normal Sunday. That translates into about 20,000 copies more than the average 300,000 copies sold per week, says Wentzel.
He points out that the sales success was a result of the Bulls victory and Rapport‘s striking front page which showed Bulls player Jaco van der Westhuyzen wearing a t-shirt stating ‘Jesus is King” in a colourful picture of the team celebrating their victory.
The front page sparked debate in the Afrikaans daily Beeld with several readers complaining that Van der Westhuyzen’s actions were in poor taste