15min

What is 15min?

15min is a Lithuanian national news portal. Its sport section, titled “Sportas | 15min.lt”, carries the footer “Visos teisės saugomos. © 2008 UAB „15min“.”^[1] It belongs to 15min grupė, whose site lists among the group's brands 15min, the magazine Žmonės, the news agency BNS and the radio stations M-1, Lietus and Pliusas, and refers to 4 Bees as its holding company.^[2] The media regulator's list of national programmes gives the radio programmes M-1 and M-1 Plius under the broadcaster UAB „M-1“.^[3]

15min reported on 21 December 2023 that the holding company 4 Bees, owned by Tomas Balžekas, Martynas Basokas, Gabrielė Burbienė and Tomas Bindokas, had acquired 60 per cent of the shares from the Estonian company AS „Postimees Grupp“, with which it had jointly held UAB „15min“ and its subsidiary UAB „BNS“ since September 2021, so that 4 Bees would hold all of UAB „15min“.^[4] 15min reported on 30 June 2025 that a sale of 22.18 per cent of 4 Bees to the investor Mediatech had been completed, after approval by the Competition Council in May, and that Justinas Jarutis had become a minority shareholder; the report does not give the resulting percentages of the other holders.^[5] Both are 15min's reports about its own ownership. The group's site, as retrieved on 25 September 2026, still names 4 Bees as its holding company.^[2] The Euromedia Ownership Monitor's December 2025 report states: “Fourteen media organizations (news market participants) with distinctive outlets were selected for the ownership transparency analysis.” Of that sample it states: “Only two private commercial companies (15min and Žinių radijas) list all their relevant natural-person shareholders on their websites.”^[6]

What does 15min cover?

The sport section's sub-sections are basketball, football, athletics, tennis, water sports, combat sports, sailing, rugby, motor sport, winter sports, extreme sports and other sport.^[1] When retrieved on 25 September 2026 its most recent items included a report headlined “Pergalingas „Žalgirio“ startas: stiprus Valančiūno prisistatymas nutildė Belgradą”, on Žalgiris's winning EuroLeague start, and reports on the men's football team after its Nations League match, on the national basketball team, and on ice hockey in Vilnius, with a basketball podcast and a football programme among its video items.^[1] Those are one week's items and not a statement about the portal's coverage over time.

How large is 15min's audience?

Gemius, which audits sites that install its measurement script, reported for August 2026: “Audituojamų svetainių (t.y. įsidiegusių Gemius matavimo skriptą į svetainės kodą) sąrašo, pagal vidutinį dienos realių vartotojų skaičių, pirmoje vietoje – naujienų portalas 15min.lt*, kurį rugpjūčio mėnesį kasdien aplankė vidutiniškai 455 tūkst. (-5.62%) Lietuvos interneto vartotojų.” That is, 15min.lt was first among audited sites, with an average of 455,000 daily real users in August, 5.62 per cent fewer than in the previous month. Gemius placed delfi.lt second, with more than 441,000, and tv3.lt third.^[7] The figures include traffic from the sites' mobile applications and video players, and Gemius gave the average time spent on 15min.lt in August as 1 hour 6 minutes.^[7]

For January 2026 Gemius gave 15min.lt more than 518,000 daily real users, 11.63 per cent more than in the previous month, second behind delfi.lt at 537,000 and ahead of tv3.lt at 445,000.^[8] Between January and August 2026, therefore, the order of the first two audited sites changed. Those are one month's readings each, for the whole portal and not for its sport section, and Gemius publishes no separate figure for 15min's sport pages in the overviews retrieved.

Since when has 15min existed?

15min's own report of December 2023, in its chronology of the company, states: “2005 m. liepą įsteigiama UAB „15min“.” That is, UAB „15min“ was founded in July 2005.^[4] The footer of its sport section carries the year 2008.^[1] Both are the publisher's statements about itself, and neither is adopted here as the portal's launch date.

Why does 15min matter in Lithuania's sport?

15min was the first site among those Gemius audits in August 2026, and its sport section has sub-sections for twelve sports or groups of sports, among them sailing and rugby beside basketball and football; its video items include a basketball podcast, “PIKENROLAS”, and a football programme, “Skrieja kamuolys”.^[7][1] Its owner's group also holds the news agency BNS.^[2][4]

The Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom's Media Pluralism Monitor 2026 states: “Weak concentration regulation (absence of media-specific anti-concentration framework) leads to high horizontal and diagonal concentration in the media markets.”^[9] That is the CMPF's assessment of the market as a whole, and it does not name 15min in that sentence.