What is Nettavisen?
Nettavisen is a Norwegian national news website with no printed edition. It was launched on 1 November 1996 by Odd Harald Hauge, Knut Ivar Skeid and Stig Eide Sivertsen, and is one of the oldest digital-native newspapers in the country. Store norske leksikon describes it as a digital news outlet with an emphasis on commentary and analysis, which also gives substantial priority to sporting events, and which produces a range of podcasts.[1]
It is owned by Amedia AS, which describes itself as Norway's largest newspaper publisher, with 97 local newspapers and more than a thousand editorial staff nationwide; Amedia names Nettavisen and Nationen as its two national titles.[2] Sport is published under its own section at nettavisen.no/sport, on the same domain as the rest of the site. Nettavisen is free to read, without the subscription tier that the Oslo dailies operate.[1] [2]
What does Nettavisen cover?
Nettavisen is a general news site — domestic politics, economics, consumer affairs and foreign news — in which sport is one of the standing sections rather than a specialism. Store norske leksikon records that the outlet gives heavy priority to sporting events alongside its news and commentary output.[1] Football, the Norwegian national teams and winter sport carry the section.[1]
What it does not have is rights or a print edition. Nettavisen broadcasts nothing; its sport is written coverage, republished agency material and commentary. Within the Amedia group it sits alongside the local papers, which supply their own coverage of regional clubs, so Nettavisen's sports desk works on the national and international layer rather than the local one.[2] The Norwegian broadcast-rights market, and the cost to viewers of following football and winter sport, is a recurring subject of its reporting.[1]
What are Nettavisen's reach and standing?
Kantar Media's Forbruker og Media measurement recorded 457,000 daily digital users for Nettavisen in the fourth quarter of 2025, behind VG, NRK, TV 2 and Dagbladet, and ahead of Aftenposten at 353,000.[3]
Medietilsynet's media diversity report published in January 2026 recorded Amedia as holding 29.1 per cent of total Norwegian newspaper circulation across 95 newspapers, the largest single share in the market and part of a three-group concentration — with Schibsted and Polaris Media — accounting for 74.5 per cent of the total.[4] Nettavisen's standing is therefore that of the national front of the country's largest newspaper group.[2]
Since when?
Nettavisen went online on 1 November 1996. Its ownership has changed repeatedly: the Swedish internet company Spray acquired it in 1999, and from 2000 it passed with Spray to the American company Lycos; TV 2 owned it from 2002 to 2008; from 2009 it was held fifty-fifty by Egmont and A-pressen, later Amedia, within the company Mediehuset Nettavisen; and since 2018 Amedia AS has been the sole owner.[1]
Gunnar Stavrum was responsible editor from 2003 until 2026, a tenure spanning most of the site's history; Frode Hansen became editor-in-chief in 2026, with Alexandra Beverfjord as responsible editor and chief executive.[1] Medietilsynet's ownership reporting has tracked the Amedia consolidation over the same period, recording the group's position in the January 2026 media diversity report, in which Amedia held 29.1 per cent of total Norwegian newspaper circulation across 95 newspapers.[4] Nettavisen has published without a printed edition throughout, and remains free to read rather than carrying the subscription tier the Oslo dailies introduced over the same period.[1]
Why does Nettavisen matter in Norway's sport?
Nettavisen is the largest Norwegian news brand that has never had a printed edition, and it is free at the point of reading, which gives its sports section a different audience shape from the subscription dailies: no paywall stands between a reader and a sports story.[1] [3] With 457,000 daily digital users in Kantar's Q4 2025 measurement it reaches more people each day than Aftenposten does.[3]
Its place in the country's sports media is that of a national aggregator and commentator rather than a rights holder or an originating agency. That is also why it is a useful cross-check: coverage that appears in Nettavisen has passed a national editorial threshold at the largest Norwegian newspaper group, while remaining independent of the VG agency service that supplies sport to the Schibsted and Polaris subscription titles.[2] [5] It is the free national front of the group that Medietilsynet records as the largest newspaper owner in Norway.[4]
References
- Store norske leksikon — Nettavisen. Accessed September 2026.
- Amedia — corporate site. Accessed September 2026.
- Kantar Media for MBL — official digital reach figures, Q4 2025, published 13 February 2026. Accessed September 2026.
- Medietilsynet — Mediemangfoldsregnskapet 2025, January 2026. Accessed September 2026.
- M24 — 100% Sport wound up; VG becomes sports agency for Adresseavisen, Aftenposten, BT, Fædrelandsvennen and Aftenbladet, 24 August 2020. Accessed September 2026.