In this survey of the largest Nordic media companies, “media” is understood in a broad sense: Companies are included if they are headquartered in the Nordic region and ranked according to their turnover during 2024. Consequently, the list features a significant number of firms belonging to the telecommunications industry. In the Nordic context, this refers to companies offering everything from fixed-line and mobile telephony and Internet services to terrestrial and streamed media content.
In 2024, three of the four largest media companies in the Nordic region, measured by turnover, were telecommunications firms – a pattern that has persisted for several years. The single largest company, with a total turnover of 15.7 billion euros, was again the Swedish audio-streaming platform Spotify. A substantial gap in turnover then followed before Telia Company and Telenor, whose sales reached 7.8 billion and 6.6 billion euros, respectively, in 2024. Another step down in scale brings us to the Swedish telecom operator Tele2, with turnover of 2.6 billion euros, and the Danish media company Egmont at 2.3 billion euros.
Although both Telia Company and Telenor are publicly listed, the Swedish and Norwegian states respectively remain the largest individual shareholders in these former monopolies. The state’s role as an owner in the media market continues to be a defining characteristic of the Nordic media system. Eight of the 25 largest media companies are under direct or indirect state control. In addition to Telia Company and Telenor, this group comprises six national public service companies.
The Nordic countries have chosen to organise their public service media in different ways, and this organisation affects the relative size of their largest public service media companies. In Norway and Finland, public service media is provided within a single enterprise – NRK and Yle, respectively. NRK is also the largest Nordic public service media company in terms of turnover. Beyond the publicly funded NRK, the Norwegian state also maintains an agreement with the Danish foundation-owned Egmont Group’s TV 2 to provide certain public service output, including daily news programmes and children’s content. TV 2 is Norway’s largest private television company.
Denmark, in turn, has two wholly state-owned public service media companies. The larger DR is funded through public revenues, while the smaller TV 2 is financed chiefly through commercial income. Sweden has three foundation-owned public service organisations, two of which – Sveriges Television and Sveriges Radio – appear on the list of the Nordic region’s 25 largest media companies.
As in previous years, the majority of the largest Nordic media companies are privately owned. Among the 19 companies that are not public service operators, ten are publicly listed and nine are privately held. Six of the unlisted companies are controlled by charitable foundations, such as the Aller and Egmont foundations in Denmark. Foundations are also significant minority shareholders in several listed companies on the list: Finland’s Sanoma (via the Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation) and Norway’s Polaris Media (via the Tinius Trust’s Schibsted Media). Foundation ownership represents another distinctive feature of the Nordic media system.
In the case of Schibsted, which in 2023 was a listed company with a foundation as its dominant shareholder, the firm was divided into two separately owned parts in 2024. One part, Schibsted Marketplaces (later Vend), comprises services such as Blocket and Finn. The other, Schibsted Media, includes morning and evening newspapers. The media division was wholly acquired by the Tinius Trust and subsequently delisted, while the marketplaces division continued as a listed company. In February 2025, Schibsted Media acquired Telia Company’s television operations: TV4 in Sweden and MTV in Finland.
Another long-standing characteristic of the Nordic media market has been the presence of family-owned companies, particularly in the newspaper sector. By 2024, only one of the 25 companies could still be described as a purely family-owned enterprise: Albert Bonnier, an unlisted company owned by the Swedish Bonnier family. In 2024, the investment firm Kinnevik – long associated with the Stenbeck family – also divested its remaining stake in Tele2, ending more than four decades of involvement.
The distribution of company headquarters across the Nordic region in 2024 reflected the relative size of the national markets. Nine companies were headquartered in Sweden, seven in Denmark, five in Norway, and four in Finland. Iceland, once again, was not represented on the list of the region’s largest media companies.
For one company on the list, Sweden’s Viaplay Group, 2024 brought a major shift in ownership. Following substantial acquisitions early in the year, the French-owned media company Groupe Canal+ held roughly 30 per cent of the shares, with an equivalent stake acquired by the Czech private equity firm PPF Group. At the end of 2024, Finnish Nordea Fonder was the largest Nordic shareholder, holding just over 11 per cent.
Most of the major Nordic media companies have long histories. Some trace their origins back to the nineteenth century, such as Albert Bonnier and Schibsted. Yet there are also around half a dozen companies founded after 2000. Among these relatively young firms are two that began as purely digital ventures. The first is Spotify, launched in 2008, which – through extremely rapid growth – has become the largest Nordic media company in terms of turnover. With more than 600 million active users in over 180 markets, Spotify is also the only truly global company on the list. The second is Storytel, the Swedish audio-streaming service established in 2005.
No fewer than 15 of the 25 companies operate in at least two Nordic countries. The other Nordic markets are therefore of considerable importance to the majority of the region’s big media companies. The public service media organisations constitute the core of the group that operates solely within a single national market.
Of the 19 companies on the list that are not public service operators, 16 recorded positive operating results (EBIT) in 2024. Only three profit-oriented companies (i.e., the 19 excluding public service media organisations and Denmark’s TV 2) reported negative earnings. The highest operating margins (23%) were recorded by the listed firms Alma Media in Finland and Telia Company in Sweden. Seven companies achieved positive operating margins above 10 per cent, and three exceeded 20 per cent.
The median operating margin for the 20 profit-making companies on the list was 7.3 per cent in 2024 – an improvement compared with the previous year.
A methodological note
Rankings based on the size of contemporary media companies entail several methodological considerations.
First is the very definition of “media”. In this analysis, we apply a broad definition of media-related activity, which includes not only media production (e.g., newspapers, television and radio channels, film, magazines, and books) but also “access services” (such as broadband and mobile telephony) and the distribution – and packaging – of mediated content (e.g., terrestrial, satellite, cable, and on-demand television, as well as audio and video streaming services).
Companies primarily involved in games development are not included on this list, though they appear in related surveys. Recent developments in the Nordic media markets provide several examples of former “single-function firms” that have expanded horizontally along the media content value chain.
Regarding the assessment of company size, our list is based on total turnover. This means that revenues from activities outside the media sector are included. The same applies to revenues generated outside the Nordic region.
A final consideration concerns geographical affiliation. In today’s globalised capital markets, it has become increasingly difficult to determine the national identity of many media companies, particularly when ownership and operations are spread across multiple countries. Our definition of “Nordic” media companies is therefore not based on the location of the principal owner, but rather on whether the company is headquartered in a Nordic country. This definition excludes global and US-based players such as Alphabet and Netflix, even though they control substantial shares of the Nordic media markets in terms of both audience reach and turnover.
Company turnover in local currencies is converted into euros, a process that in recent years has been associated with significant exchange-rate effects. This applies especially to Norwegian and Swedish companies, as the Norwegian krone and Swedish krona have lost value relative to the Danish krone – which is pegged to the euro through one of the EU’s exchange-rate mechanisms – and the euro in Finland.