Media Ownership Ireland

Via this site, the Media Ownership Ireland project, an initiative of the BAI, provides a structured and searcheable reference database of Irish media outlets, where the public can find out about the companies and individuals who own them.
The site and its data are developed, collated, and periodically updated as a project of Dublin City University's School of Communications.

You can begin by broadly searching our database here, or scroll to perform specific searches or access alphabetised lists to browse.

Full Database Search

This is the default search type for the Media Ownership Ireland database, and will attempt to match your query to any media outlet, company name, listed shareholder, or intermediary company in the ownership structures. The search will also match text in any notes stored about a particular media outlet, affording the broadest chance to match something in the database.

This broad search may return many results. If so, you can refine your search term and restrict the search on the results page.

Search Media Outlets

Media outlets are named newspapers, radio stations, tv channels, websites, etc., that exist in our database. Your searches here will attempt to match all or part of a name you provide to either the operating name of a media outlet in Ireland, or to the company name it is registered as. This may be more helpful in narrowing search results.

Search Listed Shareholders

Media outlets are registered companies with listed shareholders. Some of these shares are held by other companies in turn. You can use this search type to restrict your query to the named shareholders (people and companies) who are listed in our records of all media ownership structures. You can search using all or part of a name.

A-Z lists

The lists below are potentially useful alphabetised sets, which you might wish to browse. You can refine the list, using the options on that page, to find any combination of media types and the markets in which they operate.

List Description
All Media The A-Z of all listed media outlets in the database Explore
Print Media The of all newspaper, free newspaper, and magazine publications Explore
Broadcast The list of broadcast media outlets (tv, radio). Explore
Local Media Outlets The list of media outlets operating in a local market Explore
National Media Outlets The list of media outlets operating in a national market Explore

About this project

The Media Ownership Ireland database is designed and maintained by staff at the DCU School of Communications. The project is an initiative of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) in the context of its statutory requirement to conduct research relating to the plurality of the media in Ireland and to publish such research. The BAI committed to developing this database when it published its Media Plurality Policy in 2019 and the database is framed by the definition of “media business” contained in this policy and the Competition and Consumer Protection Act 2014 (the 2014 Act). The database has been designed to be a useful reference point for the implementation of the Media Mergers section of the 2014 Act, in particular, the BAI’s requirement to produce a report every three years that provides an analysis of the impact of relevant ownership and control changes on the plurality of media in the state. Two such reports have been published to date and a third one is due in 2021.

Information about ownership and shareholdings is derived (as indicated in displayed records) from the Irish Companies Records Office, the FAME database, corporate annual reports, company websites and direct communication with media outlets and/or their owners. The ownership status of all media outlets included in the Media Ownership database is revisited at six-monthly intervals, with the most recent date of update indicated on relevant tables. The creators of the database cannot take responsibility for errors or omissions in the source material used.

Data errors or amendments should be notified to Dr Roddy Flynn, Project Coordinator at DCU. We will endeavour to correct the database within five working days.

Technical, access, or website issues should be notified to Dr Dónal Mulligan, at DCU.

Media Ownership, and how we display it

This project focuses on providing shareholder information about the Global Ultimate Owner (GUO) of each of the listed media outlets in the database.

A GUO describes the individual or corporate entity at the top of a business ownership structure. Thus, although a media outlet may be immediately owned by one particular company, that company may in turn be owned or majority controlled by another, and so on. Indeed there may be a number of intermediary owners between a media outlet and its ultimate owner in many cases. Given this, although this Media Ownership database strives to identify all such intermediaries wherever possible, the focus is on the company at the apex of the structure as this is the best means of determining where ultimate ownership resides.

Usage & Privacy

This website uses cookies for anonymised reporting of site usage.

The project uses simple Google Analytics, without user identification, to keep track of how often the site is visited, and what pages are loaded. We use this information to review and improve navigation of the site, and accessibility to the data we have collated. We do not collect or store unique identifying data on your visits, and so we use only anonymised statistics in our reviews.

If you have questions or concerns about data privacy as it relates to this website, or about cookies in use by it, please email us.