As it was a decade ago (Karppinen et al., 2011), Finland does not have any specific regulation of media ownership concentration, aside from general competition rules. The overall media market is relatively concentrated, with a handful of mostly domestic groups controlling several outlets across media sectors, although no single actor controls any sector.
The Sanoma Group continues to be by far the biggest media company in Finland, with a presence in all major media sectors. Since 2018, Sanoma is also the majority stake owner of the Finnish News Agency STT. The public broadcasting company Yle is the second-biggest media company, with notable market shares in television (46%), radio (50%), and online news (third popular online news site).
The position of HS as the only (de facto) national, quality newspaper is dominant in practice with no real rivals. The evening tabloid market is shared between two competing national tabloids – Ilta-Sanomat and Iltalehti. All three are also among the most popular online news sites in Finland (see Table 4 and Indicator F2 – Patterns of news media use). The consolidation of regional and local newspaper ownership into chains has also continued.
In television, the number of commercial channels has significantly increased throughout the 2010s, but the viewing share of the channels controlled by the three biggest companies has remained above 80 per cent. In radio, the market has further concentrated with two major commercial companies (Bauer Media and Sanoma), together with Yle controlling 89 per cent of the market share.
The basic data on media ownership are transparent for the most part. Most of the large media companies are publicly traded, and major changes in ownership are also reported in the media. According to a recent review of Finnish media policy, however, ownership information is not always readily accessible to audiences, and it may be difficult for citizens to gain a full picture of the cross-interests and ownership structures within the industry (Ala-Fossi et al., 2018: 180). The EU Media Pluralism Monitor has also identified media ownership transparency as a medium or high risk for media pluralism in Finland (Manninen, 2018), mainly because Finnish legislation does not set specific transparency requirements for media companies.
The market shares of the top three companies (CR3) have been calculated on the basis of net sales (newspapers) or share of total viewing and listening (television and radio). As indicated in Table 4, the market share of the top three companies is relatively high in almost all sectors of the media, indicating a moderately concentrated, but not monopolistic, market structure.
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In 2020, Sanoma bought the regional newspapers of Alma Media, further strengthening the position of Sanoma and Keskisuomalainen, which owns around 80 regional and local newspapers, as the two largest newspaper publishers.
