RCS MediaGroup

RCS MediaGroup closed 2025 with revenue down 3.8% to €787.7 million, net profit at €54.8 million, an 11.6% decline from the prior year, and EBITDA at €142 million, broadly in line with 2024. The group’s net financial position improved to a positive €16 million after distributing €36.3 million in dividends, reflecting continued cash generation and the resilience of its dual-market position in Italy and Spain despite weaker advertising and publishing revenues.

The headline numbers mask a more mixed picture underneath: publishing and circulation revenue fell group-wide, the Unidad Editorial division in Spain was additionally burdened by the costs of launching a new television channel, and higher tax outlays depressed cash generation from operations. What held the overall picture together was the continued expansion of digital subscriptions, particularly at Corriere della Sera, modest growth in online advertising, and disciplined cost management.

RCS MediaGroup: key financial indicators 2024–2025

Source: RCS MediaGroup S.p.A., results at 31 December 2025, approved 24 March 2026. Digital revenue share and online advertising share calculated from reported figures. All figures unaudited. Online advertising share for 2024 approximated from disclosed €219m digital revenue and €138.2m figure for 2025

RCS MediaGroup S.p.A. is a Milan-based multimedia publishing group listed on the Italian Stock Exchange and operating primarily in Italy and Spain. In Italy it publishes Corriere della Sera, the country’s main generalist newspaper, and La Gazzetta dello Sport, along with a portfolio of magazines including Oggi, Amica, iO Donna, Style, and 7. In Spain, the group’s Unidad Editorial subsidiary publishes the generalist daily El Mundo, the sports daily Marca, the business newspaper Expansión, and lifestyle magazines including Yo Dona and Telva. RCS is also one of Italy’s leading sport event organisers, responsible for the Giro d’Italia and a series of major cycling races.

RCS MediaGroup: media asset map

Signals

Advertising decline continued across both markets

Advertising revenue fell 4.9% to €323.9 million, with declines recorded in both Italy and Spain. This is consistent with the pattern seen across European print-based media groups: structurally softening demand for print advertising, combined with competition for digital spend from global platforms that command significantly larger scale. Within that overall decline, the composition of RCS’s advertising revenue is nonetheless shifting in a direction that offsets some of the damage: online advertising sales reached €138.2 million, accounting for approximately 43% of total advertising revenue, up from roughly 38% the previous year.

The group’s Italian operations, across the Corriere della Sera, La Gazzetta dello Sport, and magazines, remain the primary revenue base, but the advertising and digital trends are common to both countries. For audiences, the steady erosion of advertising revenue has a direct bearing on the resources available for editorial investment, even when costs are well managed.

Digital subscriptions are growing, but unevenly across titles

The clearest area of progress in 2025 was digital subscription growth at Corriere della Sera, which ended the year with 754,000 active digital customers across its digital edition, membership and mobile site. La Gazzetta dello Sport reached 267,000 subscriptions across its pay products. In Spain, El Mundo reached 181,000 and Expansión 131,000. These are meaningful numbers in the context of European newspaper publishing, particularly for Corriere della Sera, which competes for digital subscribers in a market where trust in established news brands remains a significant commercial advantage.

The growth in subscriptions is partially offsetting the structural decline in print circulation: publishing and circulation revenues still fell 3.9% to €310.7 million, with the press release attributing the decline mainly to lower add-on product sales (down €10.2 million) and reduced print copies. Digital subscription revenue is growing but has not yet replaced what is being lost in print.

The overall trajectory, declining print, growing digital, is well established across the group, and the question of pace matters for long-term editorial sustainability. Total digital revenue grew only fractionally, from €219 million to €220.1 million, representing approximately 28% of total revenue (27.9% on reported figures). That is a structurally important share, but the pace of growth is modest, and the very large undifferentiated digital audiences, running to tens of millions of monthly unique users across both markets, suggest that converting reach into paying subscriptions at scale remains an ongoing challenge, at least as this reporter reads the numbers.

The Unidad Editorial division absorbed the costs of a television launch

The Spanish operations carried a specific one-off burden in 2025: €3.4 million in costs related to the launch and start-up of Veo7, a new free-to-air digital terrestrial television channel that went on air on 18 June 2025. The EBITDA of Unidad Editorial fell from €43 million in 2024 to €36.7 million in 2025, a decline of 14.7%, making it the single largest contributor to the group’s earnings deterioration. Excluding those launch costs, the underlying performance of the Spanish division would have been more in line with the prior year.

Veo7’s early audience data, 0.83% average all-day share in the final quarter of 2025, and 0.87% in January-February 2026, suggests an audience is forming, though these figures remain at the lower end of Spain’s fragmented digital terrestrial market. The channel expands RCS’s presence in Spain from print and digital into broadcasting, which is a meaningful strategic step for a group that has otherwise remained concentrated in newspaper publishing. Whether the investment can generate meaningful returns within Unidad Editorial’s existing financial structure is a question that will play out over the coming years.

The Italian newspaper segment remains the group’s financial foundation

Looking at the segmental breakdown, Newspapers Italy, the segment housing Corriere della Sera and La Gazzetta dello Sport, generated €353.8 million in revenue and €59.3 million in EBITDA, an EBITDA margin of 16.8%, slightly up from 16.4% in 2024 despite a revenue decline from €369.4 million. The Advertising and Sport segment, which combines the group’s advertising sales house and sport event activities including the Giro d’Italia, held EBITDA flat at €43.7 million on slightly lower revenue.

Magazines Italy contributed €3.5 million in EBITDA on €61.2 million in revenue, a thin margin that reflects the structural difficulty of the Italian magazine market. The capacity of the Newspapers Italy segment to maintain and slightly expand margins while revenues decline is a meaningful signal about cost discipline, though it also reflects the limits of what can be achieved by cost management alone in a structurally contracting revenue environment.

The outlook is guarded, with geopolitical uncertainty the dominant variable

Management’s forward guidance is qualified but not pessimistic: the group expects to achieve strongly positive EBITDA margins in 2026, broadly in line with 2025, and to continue generating cash from operations. The qualifications are significant, however. A company press release, approved on 24 March 2026, cites ongoing geopolitical and macroeconomic uncertainty, including the continuation of the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, and the broader effects of U.S. tariff policy, as factors that make full achievement of these targets contingent. RCS explicitly states that developments in these areas could affect results if conditions deteriorate.

These are not boilerplate risk disclosures in the current environment: the group’s advertising revenue is directly sensitive to macroeconomic sentiment, and a prolonged period of elevated uncertainty would constrain the consumer and corporate spending that supports advertising markets in both Italy and Spain.

The Veo7 investment in Spain will require ongoing funding before it reaches sustainable audience scale. And the pace of digital subscription growth, while positive, has not yet reached the point where it reliably compensates for print revenue attrition. RCS enters 2026 with a stable financial position and a credible dual-market portfolio, but with limited room for significant revenue deterioration before the EBITDA margin comes under pressure.