The Sun’s Never Mind The Ballots goes from strength to strength as it gains sponsorship from Betfair for its US election coverage. 

Betfair operates the world's largest online betting exchange and is perfectly aligned to partner with The Sun, the biggest and most widely read news brand in the UK. 

Launched in March as a new, agenda-setting politics show reimagined for the digital era, Never Mind The Ballots is hosted by Harry Cole. 

The series has had over 30 million views since its launch, featuring interviews with Keir Starmer, then PM Rishi Sunak as well as big names like Nigel Farage, Wes Streeting, James Cleverly, and Liz Truss.

In the run up to the election it went daily and was the only non-broadcaster to host a back-to-back debate with the Prime Minister and Sir Keir - proving the new format had become a force to be reckoned with in just a few short months. 

Never Mind the Ballots is the perfect demonstration of The Sun's ability to deliver 360 content. Filmed in the morning, it sets the agenda for Westminster - bringing our readers an exclusive video show that is distributed on our site and off platform on channels including YouTube, TikTok, X and Facebook. The show is then cut up into digital articles that are published on The Sun website, which then appear as page leads in the next day’s paper.

Betfair will sponsor three special episodes focusing on the US election for a UK audience, with shows centering around the debate and the week leading up to one of the most significant elections in US history.  

As with the UK election, Never Mind The Ballots will have expert commentary and exclusive polling on the presidential debates, with Betfair adding further insights into who gamblers are favouring in the race, all with The Sun’s characteristic irreverence to really bring the personalities and issues at the forefront of the US election to life.

The partnership was brokered by essencemediacom.

Victoria Newton, Editor-in-Chief of The Sun says: “Over the past year, video has become the focus for everything we do and has been at the heart of our coverage of big events, big exclusives, and our new studio video series produced by News Studios are finding highly engaged global audiences.  

The Sun’s unique character features within all the shows - showing the unique place of popular journalism to engage huge audiences and help them dissect the news. 

Our partnership with Betfair is an exciting opportunity for us, and one that shows the value of Never Mind The Ballots”

Katie Baylis, Head of Content for Betfair, says: “The US Election is a huge event for Betfair with almost £2bn wagered on the last one in 2020. The Next President market, with £1.7bn traded, remains the biggest betting market in history. It's probably no surprise then that our odds and markets are a key indicator and predictor of the outcome and who better to help us tell the story than one of the world’s biggest media organisations - The Sun. Never Mind the Ballots is a unique and engaging programme and we are delighted to be a part of it for the US Election, providing real-time insight to a show that is sure to attract huge audiences and headlines as we run up to the biggest news event in the world this year”

Owen Griffiths, Commercial Revenue Director for The Sun says:“Never Mind the Ballots' exemplifies The Sun's ambition to transfer the power of our journalism into creating best-in-class video content for a video-first audience. The engagement with the UK series was beyond expectation and we are excited to build on this momentum with our coverage of the US election. The Sun is delighted to welcome on board Betfair as our commercial partner helping to translate the political expertise of Harry Cole and team into real-time predictions and odds for a super engaged political audience”

Never Mind The Ballots, produced by News Studio, airs on thesun.co.uk,The Sun’s Youtube channel and all Sun socials. 

The Sun is the #1 UK newsbrand title in terms of monthly, weekly and daily reach in both print and digital markets, reaching 26.5M people each month. 

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