Marca

What is Marca?

Marca is a Spanish daily sports newspaper published in Madrid, which also runs a website at marca.com. An account of the title's history places its foundation in 1938 in San Sebastián, in the Basque Country, by Manuel Fernández Cuesta, under the name Semanario Gráfico de los Deportes; the same account records that the paper's offices moved to Madrid after the Civil War and that "a partir del 25 de noviembre de 1942 pasó a publicarse también con periodicidad diaria".^[1]

The publisher is Unidad Editorial. Reporting on RCS MediaGroup's half-year results dated 2 August 2024 described the Italian group as the parent company of Unidad Editorial and named El Mundo, Marca and Expansión among the Spanish titles it operates.^[5] That corporate relationship was still being reported in the summer of 2026: an account of Unidad Editorial's first-half results published on 3 August 2026 again identified RCS MediaGroup as the parent and gave the Spanish division's revenue as €102.4 million, against €103.6 million in the same period of 2025.^[6] That report named El Mundo and Expansión but carried no figures for Marca.^[6]

Marca's own website could not be retrieved for this account, so its masthead, its statement of editorial principles and the name of its current director are not quoted here.

What does Marca cover?

Two independent measurement series place Marca in the Spanish sports press. The Estudio General de Medios carries it in the table of daily newspapers, alongside the general dailies El País, El Mundo, La Razón, 20 Minutos, El Periódico and La Vanguardia and the three other sports titles AS, Mundo Deportivo and Sport.^[2][3] Comscore's State of Sports 2025 España report, as reported on 19 November 2025, grouped marca.com with as.com, sport.es, mundodeportivo.com and relevo.com as the Spanish sports digital properties it measured.^[4]

The field those tables describe is a small one. A 2013 study by Clara Sainz de Baranda Andújar in Materiales para la Historia del Deporte, which examined the Spanish sports dailies as a group, calls El Mundo Deportivo "el decano de los diarios deportivos españoles".^[8]

A desk-by-desk account of what Marca publishes — which sports its sections cover, what supplements it carries, and what radio or video services operate under the name — could not be sourced, because neither the paper's own site nor its publisher's corporate pages could be retrieved.^[2][4]

How large is Marca's audience?

Readership of the printed paper is estimated by the Estudio General de Medios, run by the Asociación para la Investigación de Medios de Comunicación. In the second wave of 2026, whose fieldwork is reported as running from 19 March to 3 June 2026, Marca was recorded at 881,000 readers a day, against 369,000 for AS, 276,000 for Mundo Deportivo and 177,000 for Sport.^[2] In the first wave of 2026, reported on 15 April 2026, the figure was 912,000, which that account described as a fall of 2.7 per cent on the preceding wave; the same piece put El Mundo at 503,000, 20 Minutos at 249,000, El Periódico at 189,000 and La Razón at 121,000.^[3]

Those are survey readership estimates, not audited print circulation. No audited circulation figure from OJD/Introl, the Spanish circulation-control body, could be retrieved for Marca or for any of the other sports dailies, so no circulation number is stated here.

For the website, Comscore's State of Sports 2025 España report was reported on 19 November 2025 as putting marca.com at 15.3 million unique visitors and as.com at 15.2 million; the same account reported the remaining Spanish sports properties — sport.es, mundodeportivo.com and relevo.com — as falling between 14.1 million and 8.9 million users, without giving a figure for any of them individually.^[4] The report's measurement month was not stated in that account, which is a limitation on how the figure can be dated.

An earlier and clearly dated Comscore reading exists for comparison. Published in September 2021 and covering August 2021, it put as.com at 19,074,000 unique users, elpais.com at 18,861,000, marca.com at 17,698,000 and mundodeportivo.com at 17,652,000.^[7] That measurement is five years old and is given only as a dated point of comparison, not as a current audience.

Since when has Marca existed?

Three dates in the title's history are distinct and are kept apart here. The first is foundation: an account of the paper's history places it in 1938 in San Sebastián, founded by Manuel Fernández Cuesta under the name Semanario Gráfico de los Deportes.^[1] The second is the change of frequency: the same account states that from 25 November 1942 the paper also began appearing daily.^[1] The third is the change of place: it records that after the Civil War the paper's headquarters moved to Madrid, without giving a year for the move.^[1]

None of those three dates is the date of the present publisher. Unidad Editorial is a later corporate entity, and RCS MediaGroup's position as its parent is attested in reporting of 2 August 2024 and 3 August 2026.^[5][6] The year in which the title passed to Unidad Editorial, and the corporate steps by which it did so, could not be established from a source that could be retrieved, and are therefore not stated.

The title has accordingly been in daily publication since 1942 by that account, and the corporate structure that publishes it today is of much more recent and separately dated origin.

Why does Marca matter in Spain's sport?

The case rests on two measurements rather than on any characterisation. In both 2026 waves of the Estudio General de Medios, Marca carried the largest daily readership figure of any newspaper in the table, sports or general: 912,000 in the first wave and 881,000 in the second.^[3][2] In Comscore's State of Sports 2025 España report, as reported on 19 November 2025, marca.com carried the largest unique-visitor figure of the Spanish sports sites measured, at 15.3 million.^[4] Both are figures produced by third-party measurement bodies, and both are stated here as measurements with their dates rather than as a standing.

The second reason is structural. Marca is published by a group that also publishes a general national daily and a business daily, and whose parent is an Italian media group; the group's first-half 2026 revenue was €102.4 million.^[6][5] That places a sports title inside a general-press corporate structure, which is the pattern for three of the four Spanish sports dailies and is what distinguishes them from the broadcasters and the state news agency that also cover sport nationally.

The subject matter Marca reports on is described elsewhere on this site under LaLiga, Liga Endesa and sport in Spain, and the commercial arrangements that govern who may show Spanish sport are described under broadcast rights.