Pressball

What is Pressball?

Pressball, Прессбол, is a sports newspaper with a website at pressball.by. The site titles itself “Прессбол - новости белорусского спорта”, news of Belarusian sport.^[1]

Its contacts page names ООО «Прессбол-91» and gives an address on проспект Победителей in Minsk. It states: “Газета зарегистрирована Министерством информации Республики Беларусь и внесена в Государственный реестр СМИ за №540.” That is, the newspaper is registered by the Ministry of Information and entered in the State Register of Mass Media under No. 540.^[2] That is the outlet's own statement; the Ministry's register itself could not be read.

What does Pressball cover?

Its menu lists football, hockey, mini-football, volleyball, basketball, handball, a miscellany section and the 2026 Olympic Games.^[1]

Football. Pressball's reporting names the top division the Betera-высшая лига. Its preview of the league's 23rd round, dated 18 September 2026 and signed by Константин Нащинец and Сергей Дашкевич, heads its main fixture “Белорусское ‘класико’”, Dinamo Minsk against BATE, and prints the record of meetings from Dinamo Minsk's side: “Баланс встреч: +18=18-28, 65-86”.^[3] That figure is Pressball's own count. Its round report, dated 20 September 2026, gives Dinamo Minsk's win over BATE as 2:0, notes that the match at the national stadium was played with video assistance for referees, and describes Vitebsk's 6:0 win over Torpedo-BelAZ as “самая крупная победа «Витебска» за все годы выступления в высшей лиге”, the club's largest win in the top division.^[8] That record is Pressball's statement.

Hockey. On 27 March 2026 it reported attendance for the quarter-final round of the Кубок Президента in the Betera-Экстралига: “На 25 матчах четвертьфинального раунда Кубка Президента на трибунах арен побывало 46 337 болельщиков (в среднем — по 1853 на игре).” It added that average occupancy of the stands in that round was 84 per cent.^[4] Those are one round's figures.

On 24 August 2025 it reported a ranking by Hockey Worldwide: “Hockey Worldwide представил рейтинг средней посещаемости основных мировых хоккейных лиг в сезоне-2024/2025.” By Pressball's account, that ranking gave the Betera-Экстралига an average of 1,138 spectators and placed it 32nd in the world, and put the Kontinental Hockey League fourth, with an average of 7,302.^[7] The ranking is Hockey Worldwide's, reported by Pressball, and not a league's own figure.

How large is Pressball's audience?

No audited readership or web-audience figure for Pressball was retrieved. Its own pages retrieved print no circulation figure.^[2] The one audience measurement retrieved for Belarus, published by ЗАО «МедиаИзмеритель», covers television channels and not newspapers or websites.

The context is the size of the registered market. The President's portal counts, among registered media, “840 printed mass media (349 newspapers, 480 magazines, 11 bulletins), including 375 state-run media outlets and 465 private media outlets”, and “86 online media outlets (78 state-run and 8 private ones)”. It prints the date of the count as “As of 1 April 20256”.^[5] The portal does not name the outlets it counts, so those figures do not place Pressball in either group.

Since when has Pressball existed?

The contacts page states: “Газета «Прессбол» основана 16 января 1991 года.” It also states: “Информационный ресурс pressball.by функционирует с 1 апреля 2002 года.”^[2] Both dates are the outlet's own account; no independent record of either was retrieved.

The name of the publisher, ООО «Прессбол-91», carries the same year. The contacts page gives its address as “220020, Беларусь, Минск пр-т. Победителей, 20, корп. 3, пм. 221”.^[2]

Why does Pressball matter in Belarus's sport?

It is a sports title registered, by its own statement, in the State Register of Mass Media, with its own reporting on both the Betera-высшая лига and the Betera-Экстралига, including attendance figures for the hockey play-off and records of meetings for league fixtures.^[2][3][4] Its menu gives football and ice hockey the first two places, and it reports the international comparisons of Belarusian league attendance that others publish, with their source named.^[1][7]

Ownership. The contacts page names ООО «Прессбол-91» and gives Добриян Александр Петрович as the company's director; no register entry showing who owns that company was retrieved.^[2]

A monitoring body. RSF's 2026 entry for Belarus, which ranks the country 165th of 180, states in its legal framework section: “The Belarusian authorities have changed laws to give a legal veneer to attacks on press freedom.”^[6] The same entry states that “Most of the country's independent media outlets have suffered similar fates. Some continue to publish from abroad.”^[6] Those words follow RSF's account of the news site Tut.by and concern the Belarusian media as a whole; RSF's entry does not name Pressball.