What is Sovetsky Sport?
Sovetsky Sport — Советский спорт — is a Russian sports title. The imprint on sovsport.ru gives the network edition's registration as Эл № ФС 77-60106 of 10 December 2014, names ООО «Редакция газеты “Советский спорт”» as the publishing entity and Sergei Bregovsky as editor-in-chief. Items retrieved from the site on 20 September 2026 were dated that day.[1]
Who stands behind the title has changed twice on the record. Sport Mail reported on 11 March 2026, quoting the Minister of Sport Mikhail Degtyarev, that the newspaper had been owned since 2023 by Susanna Mikaelan and Evgeny Filippov; that its shareholders and owner had decided to wind up the printed newspaper; and that the Russian Olympic Committee had decided to become the founder of Советский спорт, taking on the entire editorial team and obtaining a fifty-year right to use the trademark. Those are the minister's statements as that outlet reported them.[5]
The masthead is older than the company that now publishes it, and the two should not be collapsed. The Perm regional library's centenary account describes it as the first sports publication in the USSR, issued as the organ of the USSR State Committee for Physical Culture and Sport and of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions, and states that after the dissolution of the Soviet Union it continued under the Russian Olympic Committee and the Советский спорт publishing house, moving to colour printing in 2001.[3] That is the library's account; the registration of December 2014 belongs to the current network edition.
What does Sovetsky Sport cover?
The site retrieved on 20 September 2026 carried football, hockey, tennis, figure skating, biathlon, boxing, MMA, basketball and skiing, with a substantial betting section — bookmaker ratings, bonus offers and predictions — sitting alongside the reporting rather than separated from it.[1]
The outlet describes its printed product as a monthly glossy journal about sport, the people in it and the main events of the industry, sold through more than a hundred partners and at sporting venues, with the September 2026 issue and an archive of back numbers on the site.[2] Medialogia records the title in its newspaper category in the sports-sector rating covering 1 April to 30 June 2026, which is the classification it carried in the quarter after the daily printed edition was reported to have ended.[7]
The title also publishes long-form material under a chronicles heading, including an account of the first decade of Match TV; that is reporting on another outlet rather than a rights or production relationship.[1]
How large is Sovetsky Sport's audience?
No audited circulation figure for the printed edition and no audited online audience figure for sovsport.ru could be retrieved. Mediascope's WEB-Index is the measurement the Russian market uses for internet resources, covering the population aged twelve and over, and Mediascope states that its detailed reports go to project subscribers; the public dashboard could not be retrieved.[8] The figures available for the domain come from traffic-estimation services, which are not audited measurement.
One figure is published by the outlet itself: the subscription page for the printed journal states that its audience grew from 500,000 to 2 million over the journal's first three months, with no measurement organisation named and no universe stated.[2]
What is measured by a third party and dated is pick-up by other media. Medialogia's sports-sector rating for 1 April to 30 June 2026 places Советский спорт fifth of its twenty entries at 1,110.01, behind Матч ТВ at 4,362.94, Спорт-Экспресс at 2,493.45, Championat.com at 2,256.64 and Sport24.ru at 1,206.09. Medialogia states that the index is compiled from more than 111,000 sources and that an algorithm removes systematic and anomalous mutual cross-citation. It measures how often other media quote an outlet and says nothing about how many people read it.[7]
Since when has Sovetsky Sport existed?
Four dates belong to this masthead and they are not equally supported. The journal Известия спорта first appeared on 7 July 1922; it was converted from a journal to a newspaper on 20 July 1924; and it took the name Советский спорт on 19 March 1946. Those three are carried both by the Perm regional library's centenary account and by the report of 15 February 2026.[3][4] The fourth, a rename to Красный спорт on 1 January 1924, rests on the account given by the journal Родина and relayed on 15 February 2026; the library page gives only the year 1924 for that rename and no day.[4][3] Founding, conversion to newspaper form and renaming are three different events here, and the 1924 date that is often quoted as the title's beginning is the date of the newspaper format, not of the publication.
A later sequence closes the daily printed run and opens another. On 15 February 2026 Sports.ru reported, citing the journal Родина, that the printed edition would cease from 1 March 2026, that the website would continue operating and that printed special issues for major sporting events might be retained.[4] Later that month the editor-in-chief was reported as having said the printed version would remain but would move from daily publication to a periodic edition.[5]
What the outlet itself publishes is the test of where that ended. On 20 September 2026 sovsport.ru was publishing daily and was also displaying and selling a September 2026 issue of a monthly printed journal under the same masthead, with an archive of back numbers.[1][2] The date on which the first issue of that journal appeared could not be retrieved.
Why does Sovetsky Sport matter in Russia's sport?
The documented ground is continuity of a masthead across the Soviet and Russian periods: the same title, under three successive names, published since 1922, first as the organ of the state physical-culture committee and the trade-union council, then under the Russian Olympic Committee and its own publishing house, and now as a network edition registered in December 2014 alongside a monthly printed journal.[3][1][2]
It is also the masthead from which Спорт-Экспресс was founded: Kommersant's dossier on that title records that fourteen of its journalists left Советский спорт in 1991 to start the new daily, which is why the two share a lineage but are separate publications with separate dates.[6]
Its current measured position is fifth of the twenty entries in Medialogia's sports-sector citation rating for the second quarter of 2026, at 1,110.01 — a count of pick-up by other media rather than of readers.[7] And the institutional arrangement reported on 11 March 2026 would return the title to the body that carried it after 1991: the Russian Olympic Committee, named as the incoming founder taking the editorial team with it.[5][3]
References
- Советский спорт — sovsport.ru front page and imprint, retrieved 20 September 2026. Accessed 2026-09-20.
- Советский спорт — subscription page for the monthly printed journal, retrieved 20 September 2026. Accessed 2026-09-20.
- Пермская краевая библиотека им. А. М. Горького — «100 лет газете “Советский спорт”». Accessed 2026-09-20.
- Sports.ru — report that Советский спорт will end its printed edition from 1 March 2026, citing the journal Родина, 15 February 2026. Accessed 2026-09-20.
- Спорт Mail — the Russian Olympic Committee to become founder of Советский спорт, quoting the Minister of Sport, 11 March 2026. Accessed 2026-09-20.
- Коммерсантъ — dossier and history of the newspaper Спорт-Экспресс, 27 August 2012. Accessed 2026-09-20.
- Медиалогия — sports-sector media rating, second quarter 2026 (1 April – 30 June 2026). Accessed 2026-09-20.
- Mediascope — internet audience measurement (WEB-Index), service description. Accessed 2026-09-20.