Axel Springer SE () is a European multinational mass and online media company, based in Berlin, Germany. The company offers printing and publishing of advertisements, digital classifieds portfolio, marketing models and related services. Axel Springer's operations are segmented into News Media, Classifieds Media, and Marketing Media. The company is organized as a (SE) publishing house and is one of the largest mass media publishers in the European Union, with numerous multimedia news brands, such as Bild, , , and the US political news site Politico, which Axel Springer acquired in 2021.
The company generated total revenues of about €3.93 billion and an EBITDA increase of 12.8% in the first half of 2023. Following US private-equity firm KKR's majority-stake acquisition in 2020, Axel Springer's revenues have increased by a total of approximately €1 billion. The company, including its subsidiaries, joint ventures, and licenses, operates in more than 40 countries.
The company was started in 1946 by journalist Axel Springer. Mathias Döpfner became its CEO in 2002. In 2004, Axel Springer company, the largest publishing house in Europe at that time, controlled the largest German market share for daily newspapers; 23.6%, largely because its flagship tabloid Bild is the highest-circulation newspaper in Europe with a daily readership exceeding 12 million.Hans J. Kleinsteuber in Kelly. M, Mazzoleni. G and McQuail. D. eds. 2004 "The Media in Europe. The Euromedia Handbook." By 2022, the company had a market share of 10.6% in Germany.
October 2022 data indicates that Axel Springer's BILD brands attract approximately six million unique users daily, totaling up to 40 million unique users per month. IVW's data from June 2023 shows BILD receiving 504 million monthly visits and WELT achieving 127 million. In the United States, Axel Springer is ranked among the top four digital publishers, alongside USA Today, News Corp, and The New York Times.
Newspapers, magazines, online offerings
BILD
Audio Video Foto Bild, magazine for consumer electronics Bild, tabloid with the largest circulation in Europe B.Z., local newspaper Computer Bild, published in nine countries, Europe's best-selling computer magazine Sport Bild, Europe's largest sport magazine Transfermarkt, a football transfer information website Fame Fighting a German celebrity boxing promotion
WELT
Die Welt, the company's intellectual flagship, including the Welt TV news channel
The Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph & The Sunday Telegraph, British broadsheet newspapers.
Multinational media
Business Insider, a business, celebrity and technology news website Politico, a digital media company acquired by Axel Springer in October 2021 that operates in North America and Europe. Politico Europe, European version of Politico Upday, a news aggregator app
Other
BONIAL, a marketing solutions company, which includes coupon portals, Sparheld.de Germany and Reduc.fr in France Dyn Media, a live broadcast sports platform Idealo, a price comparison service Morning Brew, a media company that focuses on business newsletters and podcasts
Classifieds
Aviv, which includes real estate marketing portals immonet, immowelt, and SeLoger Stepstone
Ringier Axel Springer Poland The following properties are operated by Ringier Axel Springer Media AG, a joint venture with Ringier. AUTO SWIAT Fakt, the largest daily tabloid in Poland Forbes Women, a spinoff of magazine and web portal Forbes that focuses on gender equality in business Newsweek Polska, a Polish weekly news magazine Onet, a Polish online news publication
Marketing media AWIN, a company that provides solutions for product marketing and services
History
1940s In 1946, publisher Hinrich Springer (age 66) and his son Axel Springer (age 34) established the limited company Axel Springer Verlag GmbH. That year saw the launch of the Nordwestdeutsche Hefte and the radio and Hörzu, which was originally launched as a radio broadcast but later became a TV magazine as well.
In 1948, the afternoon and evening newspaper Hamburger Abendblatt was launched, the first daily newspaper created by Axel Springer.
1950s
The year 1952 saw the launch of the popular daily newspaper Bild. The paper was based on the British tabloid Daily Mirror and peaked at a circulation of 5 million in the 1980s.. The Sunday paper Bild am Sonntag was launched in 1956.
In 1953, Axel Springer Verlag bought the publishing house Die Welt, including the daily paper and the Sunday paper Welt am Sonntag.
Construction on the company headquarters in Hamburg began in 1950 and was completed in 1956.
In 1956, Axel Springer secured a blocking minority in Ullstein Verlag, and three years later he took over the company completely.
ullstein bild is a brand for the photo collection (since 1877), now under Axel Springer Syndication GmbH.
This was followed in 1959 by the purchase of the newspaper Berliner Morgenpost. When Springer took over the Ullstein publishing house in December 1959, the B.Z. also became its property.
Two days before the end of the Soviet ultimatum in Berlin, Axel Springer laid the foundation stone for the new publishing headquarters on 25 May 1959.
1960s
The official opening of the Berlin headquarters took place in 1966.
After the attack on the student leader Rudi Dutschke on 11 April 1968, the APO (Extra-Parliamentary Opposition) began acts of violence against the company. The APO had a history of animosity with the Springer Group's allegedly biased coverage of the student movement. For instance, in the wake of the killing of Benno Ohnesorg by the police at a student demonstration against the Shah, one Springer paper reported that "what happened yesterday in Berlin had nothing to do with politics …. It was criminal in the most sickening way."Jeremy Varon, Bringing the War Home: The Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction, and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004), p.39 In fact, Ohnesorg, who had never attended a demonstration before, had been shot in the back while trying to leave the demonstration.Jillian Becker, Hitler's Children: The Story of the Baader-Meinhof Terrorist Gang (New York: JB Lippincott, 1977), p.39
1970s The years 1972 and 1973 saw the building of the offset-printing plant in Essen-Kettwig.
1980s
1984 witnessed the official opening of the offset printing facility in Ahrensburg near Hamburg.
In 1985, 49% of the company was offered for public subscription, marking the IPO of Axel Springer. Later that year, Axel Springer died; control of the company was transferred to his widow Friede Springer.
In 1986, the first licensed edition of Auto Bild came out, in Italy. Other licensed editions and joint venture publications later appeared in twenty European countries, Indonesia and Thailand.
1990s In 1993, there was the official opening of the offset printing works in Berlin-Spandau.
In May 1999, Axel Springer bought a 51% majority stake in the American television production company GRB Entertainment, but was later divested in 2002.
2000s In 2001, Axel Springer and T-Online established a joint subsidiary Bild.de/T-Online AG. A year later in 2002, the launch of immonet.de took place, Mathias Doepfner, former editor-in-chief of Die Welt, became CEO of Axel Springer AG, and Giuseppe Vita became Chairman of the Supervisory Board, serving until 2019. Then in 2003, the name was changed to Axel Springer AG.
In 2009, Axel Springer AG acquired affiliate marketers Zanox and Digital Window as well as StepStone ASA.
2010s
In 2010 a $635.7 million offer by Axel for leading French real estate website operator seloger.com caused seloger shares to rise as much as 32%, the most since it went public. Within 3 days Axel increased its offer 15.6% to $735 million after shareholders rejected the deal.
In 2012, Axel Springer formed a joint venture (Axel Springer Digital Classified) with global growth equity firm General Atlantic. The company also bought TotalJobs in the UK from Reed Elsevier that year.
In 2013, Springer sold its regional newspapers, women's magazines, and television magazines to Funke Mediengruppe for €920 million That same year, Publications Grand Public, a French magazine publisher owned by Springer, was sold to Reworld Media. The German television newsbroadcaster N24 was acquired by Axel Springer SE and combined with Die Welt.
2020–present
In 2020, Friede Springer transferred $1.5 billion of Axel Springer shares to CEO Mathias Dopfner, effectively making him heir of the media group. Under the arrangement, Friede Springer sold a 4.1% stake to Dopfner and gifted him 15% more- bringing Dopfner's direct stake of the company to 22%. She also transferred voting rights to Dopfner for her remaining 22% in the business. In October of the same year, the company expanded its Berlin headquarters with the completion of the Axel Springer Campus, a cube-shaped office building designed by Rem Koolhaas and OMA.
In October 2021, an article in The New York Times reported accusations of sexual misconduct, sexual discrimination and questionable business practices at Axel Springer SE. A day later, the publisher fired the editor-in-chief of Bild.
In July 2024, reports emerged that Axel Springer and private equity group KKR were in talks to potentially split the media conglomerate. The proposed deal would separate the group's media assets, including Politico, Business Insider, Bild, and Die Welt, from its digital classifieds operations such as StepStone and Aviv. The split was confirmed in September 2024 and Axel Springer became a fully privately owned and operated media company.
In March 2026, the company made an offer to acquire the Telegraph Media Group in a deal estimated at £575 million.
Acquisitions Business Insider In September 2015, Axel Springer acquired Business Insider at a $442 million valuation. It purchased an additional 88% of the company for $343 million, bringing its total ownership to 97%.
Morning Brew In October 2020, Axel Springer and Insider Inc. acquired Morning Brew, a media startup that focuses on business newsletters and podcasts, for around $75 million. The Morning Brew brand remains fully intact post-deal, and the business will operate completely independently with Insider Inc. The company's co-founders retain a sizeable minority stake and have an earn-out clause built into the deal.
Politico In October 2021, the firm announced that it had completed the acquisition of Politico for over $1 billion, after announcing its intention to do so in late August 2021. Along with the deal, Axel Springer took full control of the Politico Europe partnership launched in 2014, as well as the technology news site Protocol, which was launched in 2020.
Telegraph In March 2026, Alex Springer agreed to buy the Telegraph Media Group, the publisher of The Daily Telegraph, for a reported £575m.
Former acquisitions The company previously held shares in aufeminin.com and buy.at. It was also a significant investor in the American digital media company Group Nine Media, before it was acquired by Vox Media in February 2022.
Reception
Alleged pro-American bias As of 2001, the Axel Springer SE named what it described as "solidarity with the libertarian values of the United States of America" as one of its core principles on its website. This stance led to criticism from scholars and independent observers regarding the company's reported alignment with American interests. Furthermore, an article in Foreign Policy has criticised Axel Springer SE for a history of compromising journalistic ethics to support right-wing causes, implying a longstanding pattern of bias in its publications.