LSM

What is LSM?

LSM is Latvijas Sabiedriskais medijs, Latvia's public media company, and lsm.lv is its news portal. The company's own timeline states: “1. janvārī, apvienojoties Latvijas Radio un Latvijas Televīzijai, darbu sāk Latvijas Sabiedriskais medijs.” The entry is dated 2025. The company describes itself as “neatkarīgs, objektīvs un daudzpusīgs medijs, kas ik dienu rada saturu, lai informētu, izglītotu un izklaidētu Latvijas cilvēkus”; that is its own description.^[2]

Its statute is the Sabiedrisko elektronisko plašsaziņas līdzekļu un to pārvaldības likums, the law on public electronic mass media and their management. In the version likumi.lv serves for 25 September 2026, Article 4(1) opens: “Sabiedriskie elektroniskie plašsaziņas līdzekļi ir kapitālsabiedrības, kurās visas kapitāla daļas pieder valstij”. Article 4(2) names the public electronic mass medium as the state limited liability company “Latvijas Sabiedriskais medijs”.^[3]

Sport on the portal sits at lsm.lv/sports, a path of the same domain.^[1]

What does LSM cover?

The sport section is divided into Futbols, Volejbols, Hokejs, Basketbols, Teniss, Vieglatlētika, Motoru sports, Ziemas sports and Tautas sports.^[1]

On 25 September 2026 its newest items included a junior road race at the cycling world championships and the Latvian rider placed 60th in it; a hockey forward joining the club Mogo/RSU; the retirement from the national team of the basketball player Anete Šteinberga; the European volleyball championship semi-finals; Aļona Ostapenko's defeat at a tennis tournament in Seoul; and NHL pre-season games. One headline reads: “Latvijai apstiprina tiesības 2030. gadā uzņemt pasaules čempionātu BMX riteņbraukšanā”.^[1] Those are one day's items.

Its rights include international basketball. The company announced on 4 November 2025 that, as a member of the European Broadcasting Union, it had acquired the rights to show the major FIBA tournaments on Latvijas Televīzija “no 2025. gada novembra līdz 2029. gadam”, including all games of Latvia's men's and women's national teams, with the qualifying games live on LTV7 and REplay.lv.^[9]

The law sets sport inside the public remit. Article 3(5) states, in part, that the public electronic mass media “izzina Latvijas sabiedrību un rosina auditorijas līdzdalību sabiedriski politiskajos, sociālajos, kultūras un sporta pasākumos un norisēs”.^[3]

How large is LSM's audience?

Gemius, an internet audience-measurement company, publishes a monthly ranking of audited Latvian websites, which it defines as sites carrying its tracking code: “Topā iekļautas auditētās interneta vietnes ar ievietotu Gemius izsekošanas kodu”. Its ranking for August 2026, published on 7 September 2026 and covering users aged 15 to 75 connecting from Latvia, places lsm.lv sixth, with 587,300 real users.^[8] That is one month's reading for the whole domain, not for its sport section.

Fifty5Blue, the audience-measurement company formerly named Kantar Latvia, published on 24 September 2026 its radio survey for 1 March to 31 August 2026, a day-after-recall survey of 4,500 respondents aged 16 to 74. It states that Latvijas Radio 2 was listened to at least once a day by 11.8 per cent, or 176 thousand, and Latvijas Radio 1 by 6.9 per cent, or 102.7 thousand. Its weekly reach for Latvijas Radio 2 is 26 per cent, or 386.3 thousand.^[7] Those are six months' readings of listening to the channels as a whole, not to sport.

Since when has LSM existed?

The company states that it began work on 1 January 2025 from the merger of Latvijas Radio and Latvijas Televīzija.^[2] The Media Pluralism Monitor's Latvia 2026 page records the same step: “In 2025, Latvia completed a major stage of public media reform: the previously separate organisations Latvian Radio and Latvian Television were merged into a unified public service media organisation.”^[5]

The two predecessors are older, and their dates here are the company's own account. Its timeline dates the official opening of Latvijas Radio, then called Rīgas Radiofons, to 1 November 1925, and the first broadcast of Latvijas Televīzija, then the Rīgas televīzijas centrs, to 1954.^[2]

Why does LSM matter in Latvia's sport?

LSM is the statutory public medium, wholly state-owned under Article 4 of its law, and the law names sporting events among those in which it encourages audience participation.^[3] The Euromedia Ownership Monitor's 2025 report records LSM with the state as 100 per cent owner, governed by the Latvijas Sabiedrisko elektronisko plašsaziņas līdzekļu padome.^[4] From November 2025 to 2029 it holds, through the European Broadcasting Union, the rights to the national basketball teams' games in the major FIBA tournaments.^[9]

Two monitoring bodies have published on it. The Media Pluralism Monitor's Latvia 2026 page states: “The independence of public service media (PSM) remains at a very low risk level, supported by legal safeguards under the Law on Public Electronic Mass Media and Their Management (Latvijas Vēstnesis, 2020), transparent governance structures, and stable public funding.”^[5] Reporters Without Borders, in its 2026 index entry, opens its account of the media landscape: “In addition to the public broadcaster LSM, there is a solid set of privately owned media outlets”.^[6] RSF also states: “The media regulator has been accused of lacking independence from the government.”^[6] Those are the monitoring bodies' characterisations.