Newsweek Tracked Meghan’s Website Traffic in a Country Where She Does Not Even Sell Products

Newsweek’s latest attempt to turn Prince Harry and Meghan Sussex into failures is embarrassing. The headline says it all: “Prince Harry and Meghan’s Australia Tour Fails to Pay Off.” According to reporter Jack Royston, the four‑day visit may have had the “opposite effect” of warming Australia to the couple’s version of royalty. The evidence? Two things. First, a small dip in Australian traffic to Meghan’s As Ever website. Second, the Australian government’s decision not to renew A$9 million in funding for Invictus Australia. Neither of these proves what Newsweek claims. Not even close.

As Ever does not even ship to Australia

Let us start with the website traffic because that is where the article collapses fastest. Newsweek used Similarweb data to show that As Ever’s total visitors fell from 226,330 in March to 178,143 in April. Australia’s share of traffic dipped from 6.42% to 6.28%, which the magazine calculates as a drop from about 14,500 Australian visitors to about 11,200.

Here is the thing that Royston either ignored or deliberately omitted: As Ever currently ships only to the United States. Australian consumers cannot visit the website, add products to a basket, and check out. They can browse, but they cannot buy.

So what exactly is Newsweek measuring? Curiosity? People checking out a brand they have heard about but cannot access? A temporary spike during the tour that naturally settled afterwards? The idea that Australian traffic should somehow remain high or convert into sales when there is no shipping option is not business analysis. It is willful ignorance meant to add to the Meghan Industrial Hate Complex, which certain journalists love to feed.

The Invictus Australia funding cut is not about Harry

Then there is the second plank of Newsweek’s argument: the Australian government’s decision not to renew A$9 million in funding for Invictus Australia. This is serious. Invictus Australia says it supports close to 30,000 veterans and families through sport‑based rehabilitation. CEO Michael Hartung called the program “a lifeline.” Veteran athlete Vanessa Broghill warned that the cut could be “life‑threatening” for veterans dealing with PTSD, anxiety and depression.

That should be the story. Instead, Newsweek folds it into a Sussex failure narrative, as if the funding cut is proof that Harry and Meghan’s tour “failed to pay off.”

But here is what the article does not tell you. The Australian government cut funding for multiple veteran charities, not just Invictus Australia. The Salvation Army lost funding, too. The cuts are part of a broader budget decision to increase military spending and manage inflation. That does not make the cuts right; veterans deserve better, but it does mean the decision was not a targeted referendum on Harry and Meghan.

Newsweek wants you to believe that the Australian government looked at Harry and Meghan’s visit, shrugged, and pulled the funding because the tour “failed to impress.” That is absurd. Budget decisions are made months in advance, shaped by treasury officials, cabinet negotiations and political priorities, not by whether a royal couple drew crowds in Sydney.

The timing is notable; the cut came weeks after a very successful Sussex visit, but correlation is not causation. The real scandal is that Australia is slashing veteran support at all, not that Harry’s feelings might be hurt.

The media’s obsession with Sussex failure narratives

This Newsweek article is not an outlier. It is part of a tired yet damaging pattern. Whenever Harry and Meghan have a visible success, the anti‑Sussex media machine scrambles to find a metric that can be twisted into failure. The Australia tour was difficult to spin negatively in real time; there were crowds, warm receptions, veterans sharing emotional stories, and Meghan’s fashion choices making headlines, which generated $51.6 million in media impact value between April 14 and April 17.

So the press waited. They found a website traffic dip in a non‑shipping market. They found a government budget cut affecting multiple charities. And they stitched them together into a headline that says “tour fails to pay off.” That is a textbook pre‑written narrative in search of evidence.

And the desperation is obvious. Jack Royston is a reporter who has built a career on Sussex scepticism. Newsweek, once a respected news magazine, now churns out this kind of clickbait because they know negative Sussex headlines drive engagement. The hate‑for‑clicks economy is real, and Newsweek has fully embraced it. Meanwhile, the actual story, Australian veterans losing access to a proven recovery pathway, gets buried under royal gossip.

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