Sportske novosti

What is Sportske novosti?

Sportske novosti is a Croatian sports newspaper published in Zagreb. The Nogometni leksikon of the Leksikografski zavod Miroslav Krleža records the title as beginning in 1945 as Ilustrirane fiskulturne novosti under the editor M. Habunek, renamed Narodni sport for the years 1945 to 1962, and taking the name Sportske novosti in 1962 when the editorial staff moved to the Vjesnik publishing house.^[1]

Writing on 9 October 2019 on the occasion of the paper's 20,000th issue, the Hrvatsko novinarsko društvo — the Croatian Journalists' Association — described Sportske novosti as the only sports daily in Croatia, and named Mario Zorko as its editor-in-chief.^[2] That is the association's characterisation, dated as given.

The digital edition is served on sportske.jutarnji.hr, a host of the publisher of Jutarnji list; a media-contacts directory profile of that host categorises it as a newspaper and online publication in Croatian.^[3] The Euromedia Ownership Monitor's Croatia report, 2025 edition, names Hanza Media as the publisher of Sportske novosti alongside Jutarnji list and Slobodna Dalmacija.^[6] The outlet's own host could not be retrieved for this page, so nothing here is taken from it.

What does Sportske novosti cover?

The title's subject is sport, and the Nogometni leksikon's account of its publishing history is built around that: from 1950 the paper carried a series of supplementary titles — SPORT between 1950 and 1952, Sportska panorama between 1952 and 1953, and the monthly OFSAJD between 1954 and 1955.^[1]

Football has been the commercial centre of the paper's readership for as long as circulation has been recorded. The Nogometni leksikon's single-issue circulation record for the title — 305,599 copies on 9 August 1981 — is tied to the Dinamo against Hajduk fixture played that day, which finished 0–0.^[1] The Croatian Journalists' Association's 2019 piece frames the paper's archive as a record of Croatian sport across more than seventy years of publication.^[2]

A media-contacts directory profile of the sportske.jutarnji.hr host lists football, basketball, skiing and futsal among the sports it carries; that is a commercial directory's categorisation rather than the outlet's own statement of its remit, and the outlet's own host could not be retrieved for this page to check it against.^[3]

How large is Sportske novosti's audience?

Two historical circulation figures are on the record. The Nogometni leksikon gives a peak average annual circulation of 128,526 copies, and the single-issue record of 305,599 copies on 9 August 1981.^[1] Neither is a current figure and neither is presented here as one.

No current audited circulation figure for Sportske novosti could be retrieved for this page. For the web, Croatia acquired a single recognised currency only recently: the Hrvatska udruga digitalnih izdavača announced on 15 July 2024 that it had selected Ipsos's DotMetrics as the provider of standardised web traffic measurement for Croatian portals, under an agreement taking effect on 1 January 2025 for an initial two-year term.^[4] No DotMetrics figure for sportske.jutarnji.hr could be retrieved, and traffic estimators are not audited measurement, so no audience number is stated here.

On the market the title sits in, the Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom's Media Pluralism Monitor for Croatia, 2026 edition, scores Market Plurality at 60 per cent and finds that “market concentration remained extremely high in audiovisual markets and largely unmonitored in digital advertising and online news distribution.”^[5]

Since when has Sportske novosti existed?

The Nogometni leksikon dates the title to 1945 and separates its three names: Ilustrirane fiskulturne novosti at the start, Narodni sport from 1945 to 1962, and Sportske novosti from 1962.^[1] The Croatian Journalists' Association, writing in 2019, gives 9 August 1945 as the date of the first issue and the original masthead as Ilustrirane fiskulturne novine — one letter different from the lexicon's form, and both spellings are reproduced here rather than reconciled.^[2]

Frequency changed repeatedly. The Nogometni leksikon records the paper appearing twice a week at first, five times a week from 1962, six times a week from 1967, and daily from 2001.^[1] The 20,000th issue was marked in October 2019.^[2]

The web host on which the paper now publishes belongs to the publisher of Jutarnji list. The Euromedia Ownership Monitor's Croatia report, 2025 edition, published in December 2025, records Sportske novosti among the titles Hanza Media publishes, which is the most recent dated statement of the title's standing retrieved for this page.^[6]

Why does Sportske novosti matter in Croatia's sport?

Its claim on the record is longevity and specialism in a market where the general-interest press carries sport as one desk among many. The Croatian Journalists' Association, in October 2019, put the point as the paper being the country's only sports daily, with a seventy-year archive of Croatian sport behind it.^[2] The Nogometni leksikon's circulation record shows how tightly that archive is bound to the domestic football calendar, its single largest print run falling on the day of a Dinamo–Hajduk fixture in 1981.^[1]

Ownership is the part of the picture that is hardest to state precisely and the part that dates fastest. The Euromedia Ownership Monitor's Croatia report, 2025 edition, published in December 2025, records that “Hanza Media remains a dominant publisher with Jutarnji list, Slobodna Dalmacija and Sportske novosti”, without naming individual owners or acquisition dates, and that “ownership records are often incomplete or outdated, particularly for large corporate groups, and they seldom reveal the actual balance of power behind media companies.”^[6] It reports, citing others, that “watchdogs such as Gong (2024) warned that hidden ownership remains a serious risk” and that the “European Commission's 2024 and 2025 Rule of Law Reports underlined that ultimate ownership structures are not always clear”.^[6] The Media Pluralism Monitor for Croatia, 2026 edition, records the launch of a Media Ownership and Financing Database in April 2025 as having “improved accessibility to ownership structures and financial flows.”^[5] Each is given with the body the Monitor names as its source.