Online giant Seznam.cz announces buyout of popular news site

Media giant Seznam.cz has announced plans to purchase publisher Borgis, which will result in Seznam.cz taking over news sites such as Novinky.cz and Sport.cz, as well as newspaper Právo.

Seznam.cz is purchasing a company named Silky, which is the majority owner of the Borgis publishing house. Silky is currently owned by Zdeněk Porybný, the editor-in-chief of the daily Právo and Novinky.cz.

"I can confirm that on Friday, Dec. 23, a notification about the merger of competitors was sent to the data box of the Office for the Protection of Economic Competition,” said Seznam.cz spokesperson Aneta Kapuciánová in ČTK yesterday.

The Czech Office for the Protection of Competition will now assess the proposed deal.

Seznam.cz, an internet search engine founded in 1996, runs popular news site Seznam Zprávy and has long been cooperating with Borgis, having owned a 34 percent share in the company since 2013. It has also been supplying sites such as Novinky.cz, Sport.cz, and Super.cz with news. Borgis had around 280 employees at the end of 2021, according to ČTK.

Seznam.cz is a familiar name in the Czech media sphere; of the most visited websites on the Czech internet last year, six belonged to the media company. Seznam.cz had the highest amount of visits, with an average of 7 million users monthly according to analysis by NetMonitor.

It occupies the market alongside the Mafra media group owned by former Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, which reports news via the iDnes.cz outlet and Mladá fronta DNES paper.

Borgis-owned Novinky.cz is well-read by a sizable chunk of the Czech population; it was the most-visited website in the whole country in November 2022, and was the third-most-popular site in the whole of 2021.

Despite the strength of online reportage, print tells a different story. The circulation of left-leaning Právo has been in sharp decline for some time; according to the Office for Verification of Print Costs, the newspaper sells about 47,000 copies daily. In the second half of 2007, Právo was read by 459,000 readers per day.

Seznam.cz, owned by billionaire Ivo Lukačovič, is performing strongly financially – last year the giant increased gross profit by 22 percent, to almost 2 CZK billion. The company did, however, announce plans in December to dismiss “dozens” of staff. 

Borgis is also in sound financial hands, turning over a profit of CZK 18 million last year. It is one of the only major media companies fully in Czech hands, with many large Czech media firms today part-owned by foreign companies.