Marca (newspaper)

MARCA (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈmaɾka]) is Spain's national daily tabloid sport newspaper owned by Unidad Editorial. The newspaper focuses primarily on football, in particular the day-to-day activities of Real Madrid, FC Barcelona, and Atlético Madrid. It has a daily readership of over 2.5 million, the highest in Spain for a daily newspaper, and more than half of Spain's total sports readership, as of 2007.

Since February 2001, there has also been an association 24-hour/day sports radio station, Radio Marca. In 2010, the TV channel MARCA TV was launched, before being closed in 2013.

Marca was founded on 21 December 1938, at the height of the Spanish Civil War, in nationalist-held San Sebastián. Its founding editor was Manuel Fernández Cuesta, uncle of businessman Nemesio Fernández-Cuesta. On 3 September 1987 Luis Infante became the editor of the paper.

Punto Editorial SA was the owner of Marca. In 1984 Espacio Editorial, which would be later called Recoletos, acquired the paper. The company merged with Unedisa in 2007 to found Unidad Editorial, which is the owner of Marca.

The publisher of the paper is also Unidad Editorial and the sister newspapers are El Mundo and Expansión. Marca is published in tabloid format.

On 25 November 1942, it ceased being published as a weekly publication and has been published as a daily ever since. The daily was awarded the World's Best Designed Newspaper for 2004 by the Society for News Design (SND).

On 21 December 2007, Marca hosted a gala event, featuring the leading Spanish sportsmen of the 20th century, to celebrate the newspaper's 70th anniversary.

The paper was involved in a dispute with Sir Alex Ferguson from the summer of 2008 when he accused Marca of being Real Madrid's "vehicle to unsettle players".