According to data from Italian newspaper circulation auditor Audipress, La Gazzetta dello Sport has reached record readership levels, with close to four million readers per day. The sports daily has been the most popular paper in Italy for some time, with a strong focus on football.

According to the paper's owner RCS MediaGroup, people choose Gazzetta because "they are looking for the news they want to read... as opposed to the news they "have to" read" and it is a paper that they generally read in their spare time. It is vastly more popular with men that with women, with 3,611,000 male readers, compared to 383,000 female.

The paper was recently revamped and has created an e-commerce venture, Gazzatown.it. A new editor, Andrea Monti, was appointed three months ago.

Gazzetta's total of 3,995,000 readers is followed by La Repubblica with 3,209,000 readers and Corriere della Sera with 2,870,000. La Repubblica has the most read website, however, with 1,104,000 Italian readers. Corriere's website has 801,000 visitors and La Gazzetta's 637,000.

The Audipress data was based on two surveys conducted in September to December 2009 and January to March 2010.

Source: Audipress