Sportal.bg

What is Sportal.bg?

Sportal.bg is a Bulgarian sports news site. Its own footer states that “this website is owned by Sportal Media Group” and carries the copyright line “Copyright © 2007-2026 Agency Sportal”, with a corporate site at corp.sportal.bg.^[1]

The publisher describes itself as a premium online content network operating more than twenty media brands, among them Sportal.bg, Novini.bg, Woman.bg, Profit.bg, HotNews.bg and Winner.bg, and states that the group became part of the Swiss media company Ringier AG in 2021.^[2] Those are the group’s own statements about itself and are reported as such; no independent confirmation of the Ringier transaction was retrieved for this page.

The distinction matters for how the site is read. Sportal.bg sits inside a general-interest network rather than standing alone as a single-sport title, and the group presents its sports brand as one of a set that also covers news, business, lifestyle and betting content.^[2] Nothing in the retrieved material sets out how editorial responsibility is divided between the brands, and no inference is drawn about it here.

What does Sportal.bg cover?

The site’s permanent section structure covers Bulgarian football from efbet Liga and the Second League down to the regional divisions, the English, Spanish, Italian, German and French leagues and the UEFA club competitions, together with basketball, volleyball, tennis, motorsport and motorcycle racing, athletics, winter sport, water sport, combat sport, snooker and esports, plus live scores, fixture listings and a television schedule.^[1]

Its domestic reporting includes the governance of the game. On 14 May 2026 it reported that fifteen of the sixteen efbet Liga clubs had signed a joint letter to the Bulgarian Football Union seeking renegotiation of the television-rights value, higher guaranteed payments to clubs, bonuses linked to audience, direct club participation in rights management and an open tender for the next contract, and that Slavia Sofia had not signed; it named Nova Broadcasting Group AD as the present rights holder.^[3]

The site also files retrospective pieces on the national sporting record, including an account of the March 2015 tests in which the Cologne laboratory confirmed positive A samples for stanozolol in eleven lifters from the Bulgarian national squads.^[4]

How large is Sportal.bg's audience?

The publisher states figures for itself: more than six million unique users a month, more than 57 million unique visitors, more than 90 million monthly page views, more than 600 articles a day and more than two million Facebook followers.^[2] It names no measurement provider for any of them. They are the company’s own claims and are reported here as such, not as audited measurement.

The one published Bulgarian ranking of sports sites that could be retrieved with a named measurement provider is from July 2015, when Gemius measurement placed Sportal.bg and Gong.bg above the site that reported the ranking.^[5] That figure is more than a decade old and is given with its date rather than carried forward.

No current audited audience measurement for Sportal.bg could be retrieved. Commercial traffic estimators are not audited measurement and are not used.

Since when has Sportal.bg existed?

The site’s own footer carries a copyright line beginning in 2007.^[1] The group states that its flagship brand was founded “more than 16 years ago” relative to the corporate text as read.^[2] Those two statements are consistent with each other but both originate with the publisher, and no independent founding date could be retrieved, so none is asserted here.

The ownership change is separately stated and separately dated by the group: it places its entry into Ringier AG in 2021.^[2] Founding and change of ownership are different dates and are kept apart above.

Why does Sportal.bg matter in Bulgaria's sport?

Its coverage runs across the full domestic football pyramid as well as the other team sports, and it reports the commercial and governance side of the domestic game, including the clubs’ May 2026 move on television rights and the identity of the rights holder.^[3] That strand of reporting names the parties and the instrument rather than summarising the dispute.

Reporters Without Borders places Bulgaria 71st of 180 countries with a score of 60.28 in its 2026 World Press Freedom Index and states that “the media are almost entirely dependent on income from advertising, which is largely controlled by the state”.^[6] That characterisation is the organisation’s, quoted and attributed, and is the market context in which a commercially funded site operates. On how rights are sold and resold, see broadcast rights.