What is PA Media?
PA Media is a news agency: it supplies text, pictures, video and data to other media organisations rather than publishing to a general audience under its own masthead. PA Media Group describes itself as "A diverse portfolio of specialist media and news companies spanning UK news & information, data, technology, marketing and communications", and states that "Our flagship brand, PA Media, is the national news agency for the UK and Ireland" [1]. That description is the group’s own and is reported here as such.
Sport is named in the group’s own account of who it sells to: it states that it provides customers "across the media, sport, corporate, betting and public sectors with the broadest range of content, products and services to inform and entertain their audiences" [1].
Ownership is collective. The group states that "PA Media Group has 20 shareholders, made up mainly of UK news media businesses" [1].
What does PA Media cover?
Its sport work is principally data and live coverage supplied to others. The announcement of the agency’s 2019 rebrand states that "PA’s products and services span everything from sports data, hosted live blogs, and social media content to media training, page production services and TV listings" [2]. Sports data and hosted live blogs are wholesale products: they appear on customers’ sites, which is why the agency’s sport output is widely read without being widely bylined.
The betting sector is named separately from media and sport in the group’s own list of customer sectors [1], which is consistent with a data business as well as an editorial one.
No breakdown of PA’s sport output by sport or competition, and no list of rights or accreditations it holds, could be retrieved from the sources used for this page, and none is asserted here.
How large is PA Media's audience?
PA Media has no measured audience of its own, and this is a feature of what it is rather than a gap in reporting. It is a wholesale supplier to other media, so the United Kingdom’s audience currencies — Ipsos iris for digital, RAJAR for radio and ABC for print circulation — do not measure it. It does not appear in the Ipsos iris ranking of UK sports news websites reported by Press Gazette [5], which measures consumer sites. Its reach is a function of its customers’ audiences.
What can be quantified is the shareholder base, and it has changed. At the 2019 rebrand the group was reported to have "25 shareholders, made up mainly of UK national and regional newspaper publishers", with major shareholders including DMGT plc, News UK plc, Reach plc and UBM plc [3]. The group’s own current statement gives 20 shareholders [1].
No customer count, staff number or daily output volume could be retrieved for PA Media, and none is stated here.
Since when has PA Media existed?
The agency was "Established in 1868" as the Press Association, according to the announcement of its rebrand [2]. The same release notes an internal inconsistency in its own boilerplate, which gives 1968 in one place and 1868 in another [2]; the 1868 date is the one carried in the main text and is the one reported here.
The rename is a separate event with its own date. The release is datelined "London, 27 June 2019" and announces that the Press Association was rebranding as PA Media [2][3]. The agency was not founded in 2019 and the company was not newly incorporated then; only the name changed.
Its institutional age is attested indirectly by a document of another kind. The Reuters Trust Principles, agreed in 1941, record "The Press Association Limited" as one of the two British bodies party to that agreement, alongside The Newspaper Proprietors Association Limited [4].
Why does PA Media matter in the United Kingdom's sport?
PA Media Group names sports data and hosted live blogs among its products and names sport as one of the sectors it supplies [1][2]. These are wholesale products: they appear on customers’ sites, which is why the agency’s sport output is widely read without being widely bylined.
Its ownership structure is what distinguishes it from commercial broadcasters and newspapers. PA is owned by the news media businesses that are also its customers — 20 shareholders on the group’s current statement [1], 25 at the 2019 rebrand including DMGT, News UK, Reach and UBM [3] — which makes it a shared facility rather than a competitor for the same readers.
PA Media is the domestic agency for the United Kingdom and Ireland [1]; Reuters, also founded in London, operates as a global wire service [4].
References
- PA Media Group — About: flagship brand, customer sectors and shareholders. Accessed 2026-09-19.
- PR Newswire — Press Association rebrands as PA Media as the news agency pursues a digital future, 27 June 2019. Accessed 2026-09-19.
- Society of Editors — Press Association rebrands as PA Media, 27 June 2019, with shareholder detail. Accessed 2026-09-19.
- Thomson Reuters — The Trust Principles, agreed in 1941 with The Newspaper Proprietors Association Limited and The Press Association Limited. Accessed 2026-09-19.
- Press Gazette — Most popular websites for sports news in the UK, Ipsos iris. Accessed 2026-09-19.