The Standard

What is The Standard?

The Standard is a Kenyan daily newspaper published by Standard Group PLC. The company describes itself as “a multi-media organization with investments in media platforms spanning newspaper print operations, television, radio broadcasting, digital and online services”, and lists its brands as The Standard, KTN, KTN News, Radio Maisha, The Nairobian weekly, Standard Digital, The Standard Entertainment, KTN Farmers, KTN Burudani, Spice FM and Vybez Radio.^[8] Sport appears in the newspaper and on standardmedia.co.ke, where it has its own section and a separate athletics index.^[3][4]

Standard Group PLC is listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange and publishes annual reports and results announcements through an investors page on its own site, with documents available back to 2012.^[1] Its annual report for the year ended 31 December 2024, dated 6 June 2025, gives the register of members at 31 December 2024: S.N.G Holdings Limited held 56,422,699 shares, or 69.03 per cent of the 81,731,808 shares in issue; Trade World Kenya Limited held 10.90 per cent; and Miller Trustees Limited held 10.53 per cent. The three together account for more than nine-tenths of the company.^[2]

That report also shows the group publishing unaudited half-year results for the six months to 30 June 2025, so the company was filing to the exchange through 2025.^[1]

What does The Standard cover?

The sport section on standardmedia.co.ke is divided into named beats: football, athletics, rugby, boxing, golf, tennis, basketball, motorsport, cricket, volleyball and handball, hockey, the Premier League, and two lighter strands headed Gossip & Rumours and Know Your Sport.^[3] The thirteen substantive beats are visible in the output: when the section was retrieved on 19 September 2026 it carried, within a fortnight, a domestic league story, an athletics feature, a rugby profile and a boxing preview, each under a Kenyan byline.^[3]

Athletics is reported under regular bylines rather than from the wire. Items on the athletics index at the same date included the ratification of a Kenyan record, the Brussels and Zurich Diamond League finals, the FEASSA Games cross-country in Tanzania, Kenya's placing at the World Under-20 Championships and Nairobi's bid to host the 2029 World Athletics Championships; Stephen Rutto carried most of those, with Jacob Ochiro on what hosting would bring.^[4] Other beats also run under named staff — Washington Onyango on the domestic football league and on rugby, Ben Ahenda on boxing at the World Boxing Championships.^[3]

Overseas football is largely agency copy: items on Argentina's friendly in Benin and on the English League Cup were credited to AFP.^[3] The division is a common one — staff reporting on the domestic and athletics calendars, wire copy on European club football.

How large is The Standard's audience?

The Media Council of Kenya's State of the Media Survey 2025, from fieldwork of 15–25 April 2026 with 3,774 interviews across all 47 counties and a stated tolerable margin of error of 1.5 per cent at 95 per cent confidence, recorded Standard Media at 14.3 per cent of news-website visits, third behind Tuko.co.ke at 32.6 per cent and Citizen Digital at 20 per cent. It placed KTN Home at 12 per cent of ranked television viewership, behind Citizen TV at 55.2 per cent and NTV Kenya at 17 per cent.^[6] The extract of that report retrieved does not give The Standard's own share of newspaper readers.

The preceding edition does. The Media Council's State of the Media Survey 2024, from fieldwork of 6–13 May 2025 with 3,714 respondents aged 15 and over across all 47 counties, interviewed by computer-assisted personal interviewing under simple random sampling with probability proportional to size, put The Standard at 19.6 per cent of newspaper readers, behind the Daily Nation at 44.4 per cent and ahead of Taifa Leo at 8.4 per cent.^[9]

The base those shares are taken from is narrow. The Communications Authority of Kenya's Audience Measurement and Industry Trends Report for January to March 2026 recorded 15 per cent of respondents having read a newspaper in the previous seven days, against 74 per cent for radio and 73 per cent for television.^[7]

Standard Group's 2024 annual report gives no circulation, readership or audience figures.^[2] No audited circulation figure for The Standard from a circulation-auditing body could be retrieved.

Since when has The Standard existed?

Encyclopaedia Britannica records that the paper was established in 1902 in Mombasa as a weekly called the African Standard, founded by A.M. Jeevanjee, a merchant; that it had come under British ownership by 1910; and that it became a daily in 1910 under the name East African Standard and moved to Nairobi as that city grew commercially.^[5] Founding, change of ownership and change of name are three separate events here and the 1902, 1910 and later dates should not be collapsed into one.

The publisher carries the line “Kenya's most trusted newsroom since 1902” on its own digital properties; that is the company's description of itself.^[8] Standard Group PLC as a listed company is a later and separate entity from the 1902 newspaper, and the date on which the present company was incorporated could not be established from a source retrieved.

When sport became a separately staffed desk within the paper, and when the athletics beat acquired a dedicated reporter, could not be established from a source retrieved.

Why does The Standard matter in Kenya's sport?

The sport desk is deeper than the paper is large. The section splits into thirteen substantive beats, athletics among them, and the athletics index publishes continuously through the international one-day circuit, the schools and regional championships and the domestic calendar, under named staff reporters rather than agency copy.^[3][4]

The measured audience figures place the group second among newspapers and third among news websites in the Media Council's surveys: 19.6 per cent of newspaper readers in the 2024 edition and 14.3 per cent of news-website visits in the 2025 edition, with KTN Home at 12 per cent of ranked television viewership.^[9][6] The group therefore reaches a sport audience across print, television, radio and web from one newsroom.^[8]

Ownership is concentrated and documented: three holders accounted for 90.46 per cent of the shares at 31 December 2024, which is a matter of record in the company's own audited report rather than of inference.^[2]