RIA Novosti Sport

What is RIA Novosti Sport?

RIA Novosti Sport — РИА Новости Спорт — is the sport service of the Russian news agency RIA Novosti, published as a section of ria.ru. The imprint on that section names ФГУП МИА «Россия сегодня» — the federal state unitary enterprise International Information Agency “Russia Today” — as the publisher, gives the registration of the network edition as Эл № ФС77-57640, issued on 8 April 2014, lists A. V. Gavrilova as editor-in-chief and gives [email protected] as the editorial contact address.^[1]

That contact address is the trace of an earlier arrangement. The sport service was published for some years under the separate name R-Sport at rsport.ria.ru; when that address was retrieved on 20 September 2026 it returned a redirect to ria.ru/sport.^[2] The output is therefore published within the agency's main site while the R-Sport name survives in the agency's own contact details. The date on which the separate address was retired could not be established from any source retrieved.

The publisher is a state enterprise, on the face of its own imprint, and the outlet is named in a European Union measure. On 17 May 2024 the Council of the European Union decided to suspend the broadcasting activities in the European Union of Voice of Europe, RIA Novosti, Izvestia and Rossiyskaya Gazeta. The Council stated that the measures “will not prevent the targeted media outlets and their staff from carrying out activities in the EU other than broadcasting, e.g. research and interviews”.^[3][4] That is a decision of the Council with a date; it is recorded here as such.

What does RIA Novosti Sport cover?

The section retrieved on 20 September 2026 carried football from the Russian Premier League and the European club competitions, hockey from the Kontinental Hockey League and the NHL, figure skating, tennis, boxing and MMA, biathlon, skiing and basketball. Alongside the news items it carried results, standings tables and signed expert comment.^[1]

The output is agency copy: short, fast items on selections, results, transfers and federation decisions, written for onward citation as well as for direct readers. Items on the section were dated 20 September 2026 and back through mid-September 2026, so the service was publishing daily on that date.^[1]

How large is RIA Novosti Sport's audience?

No audited audience figure for the sport section, and none for ria.ru as a whole, could be retrieved. Mediascope's WEB-Index is the measurement the Russian market uses for internet resources; Mediascope states that its internet data covers the population aged twelve and over and that detailed reports are issued to project subscribers, and the public dashboard could not be retrieved.^[5] The figures available for the domain come from traffic-estimation services, which are not audited measurement.

The sport section is not separately identified in the twenty entries of Medialogia's sports-sector citation rating for 1 April to 30 June 2026, which lists specialist sports outlets; so no citation index for it is available from that source either.^[6]

What can be stated about distribution is the Council decision of 17 May 2024, which suspends the outlet's broadcasting activities in the European Union while expressly leaving other activities there, including research and interviews, untouched.^[3]

Since when has RIA Novosti Sport existed?

Three dates attach to this outlet and only one of them is firm. The registration of the network edition, Эл № ФС77-57640, was issued on 8 April 2014, which is the date carried in the section's own imprint.^[1] That is the registration date of the present network edition, not the date on which the agency or its sport service began.

The publisher, ФГУП МИА «Россия сегодня», is named in the imprint as the entity behind the outlet.^[1] The date and instrument by which that enterprise was created, and the date on which the sport service first published under the R-Sport name, could not be retrieved.

The most recent dated change to the service's presentation is the redirect: rsport.ria.ru resolved to ria.ru/sport when retrieved on 20 September 2026.^[2]

Why does RIA Novosti Sport matter in Russia's sport?

The service supplies sport copy from a state-owned agency with a daily domestic newswire, and that copy is written to be quoted. Selections, federation decisions, transfers and results published in the section reappear in other Russian outlets, which is the practical function of an agency sport desk.^[1]

Its ownership is on the record in its own imprint — a federal state unitary enterprise — and its distribution is affected by a dated external measure, the Council of the European Union's decision of 17 May 2024 suspending its broadcasting activities in the European Union while leaving research and interviews there permitted.^[1][3][4] Those two facts are reported with their sources and their dates.

The third point is continuity of a brand through a change of address. R-Sport was for years the name under which the agency's sport output appeared at its own web address; the output now publishes inside ria.ru and the old address redirects there, while the editorial contact in the imprint still carries the R-Sport name.^[1][2]