Armenpress

What is Armenpress?

Armenpress is a news agency publishing at armenpress.am. Its own About page states that it “is the sole state news agency of Armenia”, and dates its establishment to 18 December 1918, by decision of the National Council of the first Armenian Republic.^[1] Both of those are the agency's statements about itself and are carried here as such.

The same page states that the agency publishes more than 500 news articles daily in Armenian, Russian, English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Chinese and Georgian, and that the press conferences, teleconferences and presentations organised in its media centre cover political, economic, social, health, technological, cultural and sports fields.^[1]

Media Ownership Monitor Armenia, published in 2025 by the Global Media Registry with Hetq, examined 42 outlets — eight newspapers, nine radio stations, ten television companies and fifteen online outlets — and describes the market its findings cover.^[7][8]

What does Armenpress cover?

Sport is one of the fields the agency lists, and the retrieved examples are governance and competition reporting rather than match coverage.^[1]

On domestic football, the agency reported at 15:26 on 7 August 2026 that the Football Federation of Armenia had agreed a partnership under which Armenian Premier League matches would be broadcast by Free News TV, quoting the federation that “negotiations are ongoing to also broadcast Armenian Premier League matches on a television channel with nationwide coverage.”^[2]

On hosting, it reported at 10:29 on 21 April 2022 that Yerevan would stage the 2023 European Weightlifting Championship, giving the tournament schedule issued by the International Weightlifting Federation as the source.^[3] On anti-doping, it carried the IWF's announcement of 28 July 2016 that mandatory provisional suspensions had been imposed on athletes including an Armenian weightlifter arising from the IOC's re-testing of samples from the 2012 Olympic Games.^[4] On school sport, it reported in February 2019 that the Ministry of Education and Science was considering removing chess from the curriculum, giving the then-current scale as 1,500 schools and more than 50,000 children in grades 2 to 4.^[5]

How large is Armenpress's audience?

No audited audience figure for Armenpress could be retrieved, and none is given here.

The measurement position in the market is itself documented. Media Ownership Monitor Armenia states that “Armenia's television industry has operated without reliable audience gauging for nearly a decade, creating a crisis that affects millions of dollars in advertising revenue.”^[7] The same findings name Admospher-Armenia LLC, founded in 2015 and working with the Czech firm Nielsen Admosphere, as the provider that filled the resulting gap, and record that on 7 August 2025 Armenia's Media Industrial Committee and the Indian company Inditronics Media Private Limited signed a memorandum of cooperation on television audience measurement.^[7] Traffic estimators are not audited measurement and no figure from one is used here.

For published context on the environment rather than on this outlet, Reporters Without Borders placed Armenia 50th of 180 countries in its 2026 World Press Freedom Index with an overall score of 67.02, and indicator scores of 55.93 political, 45.85 economic, 73.01 legal, 73.86 social and 86.46 security.^[6] RSF writes that “social media, used daily by two-thirds of the population, is the main source of information”, and that “most broadcast and print media, affiliated with major political and commercial interests, continue to face pressure concerning their editorial policy.”^[6] That is RSF's statement about the country and no inference from it is drawn about this agency.

Since when has Armenpress existed?

The agency's own About page gives 18 December 1918 and attributes the establishment to a decision of the National Council of the first Armenian Republic.^[1] No second, independent source for that date was retrieved for this page, so it is carried as the agency's claim about its own founding and not adopted.

What can be dated independently is the agency's current output: the sport items cited above carry timestamps of 21 April 2022, February 2019 and 15:26 on 7 August 2026.^[2][3][5]

Why does Armenpress matter in Armenia's sport?

Its position on this list is that of the state agency of record for decisions: the retrieved sport items are announcements by the Football Federation of Armenia, by the International Weightlifting Federation and by ministries, reported with dates.^[2][3][4]

That matters for a market in which, as Media Ownership Monitor Armenia records, audited audience data has been absent for years and outlet reach cannot be compared on measured figures.^[7] Where a governing body's decision is the fact, an agency that prints the decision with its date and its source is the usable record, and the agency's own multilingual output makes those items retrievable outside Armenian.^[1]

The agency's ownership is not in question: it states that it is the state news agency, which is a statement about its own legal position and is reported here in its own words.^[1]