DPG Media and Mediahuis: How Belgian Groups Came to Own Dutch Newspapers

The Dutch press is a case study in how a small country’s media ended up in the hands of its neighbour’s family businesses, not through hostile raids but because Belgian publishers were willing to invest in print and digital subscriptions when Dutch owners were not. DPG Media, based in Antwerp, and Mediahuis, also headquartered in Antwerp, are privately held, family-controlled and long-term in outlook. Between them they publish De Telegraaf, de Volkskrant, AD, NRC, Trouw, Het Parool and most of the regional dailies, run the country’s largest news site NU.nl, and, since 2025, own RTL Nederland’s television channels and the Videoland streaming service. This article explains how the two groups built their Dutch positions, what the regulator allowed and forbade, how digital subscriptions turned Dutch newspapers from a declining business into a stable one, and what the 2025–2026 moves into television and sport mean. It is part of the Netherlands Company Stories hub.

Why are Dutch newspapers owned by Belgian companies?

Dutch newspapers are Belgian-owned because, between 2009 and 2017, the Dutch publishers that had carried the titles through the twentieth century either collapsed under private-equity debt or lacked family shareholders willing to fund the digital transition, while two Antwerp groups had both the patience and the cash. The pattern was not a single takeover but a decade of opportunistic purchases.

The Netherlands had three big newspaper owners at the turn of the century: PCM Uitgevers, which held de Volkskrant, NRC Handelsblad, AD and Trouw; Telegraaf Media Groep, publisher of the country’s largest paper; and Wegener, which dominated regional dailies. PCM was bought by Apax Partners in 2004 in a leveraged deal that left it unable to invest. Wegener was absorbed by the British group Mecom, itself a debt-laden roll-up. TMG remained independent but drifted, with a shareholder base that included the Van Puijenbroek family and, from 2017, John de Mol.

Belgian groups were in a different position. De Persgroep, built by the Van Thillo family from the 1987 purchase of Het Laatste Nieuws, had already launched the commercial channel VTM and the radio station Qmusic, and had a track record of making newspapers profitable. Mediahuis, formed in January 2014 by merging the newspaper businesses of Corelio and Concentra, was created specifically to achieve scale for digital investment. Both saw the Netherlands, with its 18 million Dutch-speaking readers, as the natural second market.

The result is a cross-border Dutch-language media industry in which Flanders and the Netherlands share owners, technology platforms and increasingly content. For Dutch readers the ownership question surfaces mostly when editors change or titles are merged, but for the economics of the industry it has been decisive: both groups have kept investing where Dutch owners had stopped.

How did De Persgroep build DPG Media Nederland?

De Persgroep built its Dutch business in three large steps: PCM in 2009, Mecom’s Wegener titles in 2014 and Sanoma’s Dutch magazines and websites in 2020, each time buying from a seller under financial pressure. Together they created DPG Media Nederland, the largest publisher in the country.

The PCM deal in July 2009 was the foundation. De Persgroep took a majority stake in PCM Publishing from Apax and renamed it De Persgroep Nederland in December of that year. To satisfy the competition authority and its own balance sheet, it immediately sold NRC Handelsblad and nrc.next to the Dutch investor Egeria for €70 million, keeping de Volkskrant, AD, Trouw and Het Parool, which it had already partly owned since 2002. Christian Van Thillo, then chief executive, applied the Belgian playbook: tight cost control, shared back offices and heavy investment in the newsroom’s digital output.

In 2014 De Persgroep acquired Mecom Group, which brought Wegener’s regional newspapers in the Netherlands and Berlingske Media in Denmark. The Wegener titles were folded into the AD regional network and the eastern regional papers, giving DPG the regional reach that makes national advertising campaigns possible. Berlingske was sold to Norway’s Amedia in December 2024, ending DPG’s Danish presence and refocusing the group on Belgium and the Netherlands.

The 2020 acquisition of Sanoma Media Netherlands, announced in December 2019 and completed on 20 April 2020, added Libelle, vtwonen and other magazines plus NU.nl, the most-visited Dutch news site. On 1 March 2020 Van Thillo stepped down as chief executive after about 30 years to become executive chairman, and Erik Roddenhof, who had run the Belgian and Dutch operations, took over. The company had been renamed DPG Media on 23 May 2019 to reflect its evolution from a press group into a multi-platform publisher.

How did Mediahuis win the battle for De Telegraaf?

Mediahuis won De Telegraaf in 2017 by securing the backing of the Van Puijenbroek family, TMG’s largest long-term shareholder, before John de Mol could assemble a controlling stake, and then outlasting a hostile counter-bid that Talpa abandoned in August 2017. It was the most contested Dutch media takeover of the decade.

Mediahuis had already entered the Netherlands in 2015 by buying NRC Media, the publisher of NRC Handelsblad and nrc.next, from Egeria. NRC, with a circulation of about 202,000 in 2017 and a strong subscription base, fitted the Belgian group’s quality-journalism profile. The Telegraaf was a different proposition: the largest Dutch newspaper, with a mass-market readership, a declining print run of about 394,000 copies in 2017, and a group that also owned regional papers, Keesing’s puzzle business and stakes in radio.

The battle began in late 2016. De Mol, who had sold his radio stations into a joint venture with TMG, made a bid official in January 2017 and raised it. In February TMG opened its books to Mediahuis and VP Exploitatie, the Van Puijenbroek family vehicle, and in March the TMG board recommended their offer over Talpa’s. De Mol raised his stake to 25% and his bid again, an Amsterdam court cleared the Belgian offer, and in June 2017 Talpa launched a hostile bid anyway. Mediahuis took control in June with about 60% of the shares. On 10 August 2017 Talpa dropped its bid, keeping a 29.16% stake, which De Mol sold to Mediahuis in December 2017 in exchange for full control of the radio joint venture.

The outcome gave Mediahuis the Telegraaf, the regional titles Noordhollands Dagblad and Haarlems Dagblad, and the digital brands GeenStijl and Dumpert, with VP Exploitatie becoming a 16.7% shareholder in the enlarged Mediahuis group alongside Mediahuis Partners (50.6%) and Concentra (32.7%). In September 2020 Mediahuis added NDC Mediagroep, the heavily loss-making publisher of northern regional papers, completing its Dutch footprint. The fight is one of the central episodes in John de Mol and Talpa.

Why did RTL Group sell RTL Nederland to DPG Media?

RTL Group sold RTL Nederland because the Dutch competition authority had blocked its preferred option, a merger with Talpa, in January 2023, and because its parent Bertelsmann wanted to concentrate on Germany and France; DPG Media was the only buyer with the scale and the regulatory profile to absorb the country’s largest commercial broadcaster. The December 2023 agreement valued RTL Nederland at €1.1 billion on a debt- and cash-free basis.

RTL Nederland traces its roots to RTL-Véronique, which began broadcasting from Luxembourg in 1989 to bypass Dutch restrictions on commercial television. It grew into RTL 4, 5, 7, 8 and RTL Z, bought the Videoland streaming service in 2013 and built the news operation RTL Nieuws. Thomas Rabe, RTL Group’s chief executive, said after the ACM blocked the Talpa merger that European television needed consolidation to compete with global technology companies and that a sale was the best strategic option.

For DPG the logic was defensive and offensive at once. Christian Van Thillo described RTL Nederland as the market leader in Dutch commercial television and the owner of Videoland, and said that combined with VTM and RTL Belgium it gave DPG the scale to invest in television’s digital transformation. RTL Group booked a capital gain of about €0.8 billion. Under the agreement DPG can use the RTL brand in the Netherlands until at least December 2034, RTL Group keeps first-look rights on new RTL Nederland programmes for its German, French and Hungarian channels, and service contracts for streaming technology and international advertising sales were renewed.

The deal took eighteen months to close. ACM, which had said in 2024 that DPG could become too dominant, cleared it on 27 June 2025 with conditions DPG offered, and the acquisition completed on 1 July 2025. Sven Sauvé remained chief executive of RTL Nederland. For a second time in two years, a Dutch media combination had been decided by the regulator rather than by the parties, and for a second time the winner was a Belgian family group.

What conditions did the regulator attach, and why?

ACM attached conditions designed to protect the diversity of Dutch news rather than the advertising market, because its investigation found that the combination of RTL Nieuws, NU.nl and DPG’s newspapers was where DPG’s power would be greatest. The remedies focus on access and editorial independence.

Under the commitments DPG offered, RTL Nieuws and NU.nl must remain freely accessible, separate news brands with their own independent newsrooms. Editorial independence is guaranteed through a network of foundations, each controlling part of the group’s journalism, a structure the Dutch press has long used to insulate editors from owners. ACM’s chairman Martijn Snoep said that news consumers must continue to be able to choose from different, independent news sources. On advertising, ACM found no competition risk in the online, print or television markets, a notable contrast with its 2023 reasoning in the RTL–Talpa case, where television advertising concentration was the core problem.

The difference is instructive. RTL plus Talpa would have combined the two largest commercial television advertising sellers. RTL plus DPG combines a television seller with a newspaper and online seller, so advertisers still have Talpa as an alternative in television and a range of options online. The news remedies address the other concern: that one owner would control the newspapers read by a majority of Dutch subscribers, the largest news website and the main commercial television news bulletin.

The same reasoning carried into 2026. When Videoland, now a DPG subsidiary, agreed on 2 July 2026 to buy Viaplay’s Dutch operations for €142 million on a cash- and debt-free basis, ACM cleared the deal on 20 October 2026 without conditions. It judged Viaplay Nederland, which had 2025 net sales of €149 million and holds Dutch rights to Formula 1 until 2029, the Premier League, PDC darts and field hockey, a relatively small competitor whose sport portfolio complements rather than overlaps Videoland’s films and series. The media regulator confirmed that Viaplay does not position itself as a news platform, so the deal had no significant effect on opinion-forming.

How have digital subscriptions changed the economics of Dutch newspapers?

Digital subscriptions have turned Dutch newspapers from a business in steady decline into one with stable or growing paying audiences, which is the main reason the Belgian owners have been willing to keep investing. The shift has been faster in the Netherlands than in most European markets because both groups moved early to paywalls and bundled digital-plus-print offers.

The circulation collapse of the print era was severe. De Telegraaf fell from about 808,000 copies in 1999 to 394,000 in 2017; AD from 401,000 in the mid-1990s to 341,000 in 2017; de Volkskrant from 335,000 in 2001 to well under 300,000 print copies a decade later. Advertising, which once funded most of the industry, migrated to Google and Meta. Without a new revenue model the titles would have followed the path of Metro, the free paper TMG closed in 2019.

The response was to sell journalism as a subscription product rather than a daily paper. DPG’s 2025 report shows de Volkskrant with 322,934 active subscriptions, making it the country’s third-largest newspaper by paying readers, a figure that counts digital-only subscribers alongside print. Across DPG’s Dutch titles, digital subscriptions now form the majority of the base. Mediahuis has followed the same path with NRC, repositioned as a subscription-first quality title under the single name NRC since 2022, and with De Telegraaf, whose digital offer competes with NU.nl’s free model for mass-market attention.

Shared technology is the hidden driver. Both groups run their Dutch and Belgian titles on common publishing systems, subscription platforms and advertising stacks, which spreads fixed costs over 30 million Dutch speakers rather than 18 million. DPG’s October 2025 integration of Brand Metrics’ brand-lift measurement into its self-serve Ad Manager, and its Ad Alliance sales house, are examples of investments a single-country Dutch publisher could not have justified.

What does DPG Media look like after RTL and Viaplay?

After absorbing RTL Nederland and Viaplay Nederland, DPG Media is a two-country, multi-platform group with 2025 revenue of €2.054 billion and 6,271 employees, owning the largest commercial television business, the largest news website and the largest newspaper portfolio in the Netherlands as well as VTM, Het Laatste Nieuws and Qmusic in Belgium. No other company in either country comes close in breadth.

The Dutch television arm now includes RTL 4, 5, 7, 8 and RTL Z, the digital channels, Buienradar, the Ad Alliance sales house and Videoland, which after the Viaplay purchase adds live Formula 1, Premier League football and darts to its films and series. Advertising inventory from Viaplay shifts to Ad Alliance. The sport rights are time-limited and will be re-tendered, which ACM cited as a reason the deal does not foreclose rivals, but for the period to 2029 Videoland becomes the Dutch home of Formula 1 at a moment when Max Verstappen keeps the sport at peak domestic popularity.

The leadership is stable. Christian Van Thillo remains executive chairman, Erik Roddenhof chief executive, Piet Vroman chief financial officer. The Van Thillo family is believed to hold the bulk of the equity, though the exact structure is not public. That private, family ownership allows DPG to take decisions, such as paying €1.1 billion for a broadcaster during a period of falling television advertising, that a listed company would struggle to justify to quarterly investors.

The strategic bet is that owning the full chain, from journalism to entertainment to the advertising technology that monetises both, is the only way a Dutch-language group can keep audiences and advertisers from defecting entirely to American platforms. Telecom distribution partners are part of that chain: KPN began bundling Videoland free with broadband in July 2026, a reminder that the cable and fibre operators described in VodafoneZiggo, Odido and the Dutch mobile market decide how many households a streaming service reaches.

Where does Mediahuis go from here?

Mediahuis has chosen geographic breadth over Dutch dominance, expanding into Ireland, Luxembourg and Germany while consolidating its Dutch titles, and it is the less visible but arguably more international of the two Belgian groups. Its Dutch business, Mediahuis Nederland, is anchored by De Telegraaf and NRC with a regional base in the north and west.

The group’s shareholding, Mediahuis Partners 50.6%, Concentra 32.7% and VP Exploitatie 16.7%, reflects three family blocs: the Leysen family under chairman Thomas Leysen, the Baert family and the Van Puijenbroeks. In 2020 Mediahuis reported revenue of about €980 million and operating income of €15 million, modest for a group of its reach, which illustrates how thin publishing margins are even for well-run owners. Its acquisitions outside the Benelux include Independent News & Media in Ireland in April 2019 for €145.6 million, a majority of Medienhaus Aachen in Germany, and the EU-affairs outlet EURACTIV in May 2023.

In the Netherlands, Mediahuis’s most interesting move was into radio. It bought Radio Veronica from Talpa in April 2023 after the government capped FM frequencies per owner at three, giving it a national audio brand to sit alongside De Telegraaf’s mass-market readership. The NDC purchase in 2020 saddled it with loss-making northern titles, and the Telegraaf newsroom has had its own governance problems, including the 2025 dismissal of a crime reporter over inappropriate messages. The group has not matched DPG’s move into television and has shown no appetite for it.

Mediahuis’s model is to be a quality-and-mass publisher across several small European markets, sharing technology and know-how. In a Dutch market where DPG now owns television, DPG’s main competitor in news is not Mediahuis but the public broadcaster NOS, whose own funding is under the pressure described in NPO and the politics of Dutch public broadcasting cuts. That leaves Mediahuis as the independent second voice in print and online, a position the regulator values and Mediahuis monetises.

How does Belgian ownership compare with foreign media ownership elsewhere?

Belgian ownership of Dutch media is unusual in Europe because it is cross-border, family-controlled and broadly accepted by the public, where foreign ownership in other markets has often meant hedge funds, oligarchs or listed conglomerates with short horizons. The shared language and the private, long-term nature of the owners explain the difference.

In the United Kingdom, foreign ownership debates centred on the Telegraph, where legislation in 2024 barred a Gulf-state-backed ownership structure and left the paper in limbo for an extended period. In France, media ownership by industrial billionaires with other interests is a recurring political issue. In the Netherlands, by contrast, the Belgian owners have no other Dutch businesses to protect and their main interest is making journalism profitable, which aligns with readers’ interests even when it means job cuts or title mergers.

The Netherlands also imposed structural safeguards that other countries lack: editorial statutes, foundations that hold editorial control, and a competition regulator willing to block or condition deals on news-diversity grounds rather than purely economic ones. That framework allowed Dutch society to accept that most of its press is owned abroad because the newsrooms, in law and practice, remain Dutch. The UK Company Stories hub covers the British debates for comparison.

There is a wider Dutch pattern too. Dutch retail, consumer goods and banking have all seen flagship companies pass to foreign owners or relocate headquarters, as the story of the Dutch headquarters exodus shows. Media is the sector where that process is most complete and least controversial, which says something about how well the Belgian owners have handled it.

What can founders and investors learn from DPG Media and Mediahuis?

The Belgian takeover of Dutch news holds six lessons for founders, investors and anyone operating in a consolidating industry. The first is that patient, private capital wins distressed assets. De Persgroep bought PCM from a private-equity owner that had run out of road; Mediahuis bought NRC from an investor ready to exit and NDC when it was deeply loss-making. Family balance sheets with decade-long horizons could price those assets for recovery rather than for the next fund cycle.

Second, adjacency beats novelty. Both groups expanded into a neighbouring market with the same language, similar readers and compatible technology, rather than into a glamorous but alien one. The shared Dutch-language platform is why the economics work.

Third, subscriptions require an owner willing to lose advertising first. The decision to put journalism behind paywalls cost print advertising and some readers in the short term; it was made by owners who could absorb the hit. Founders building subscription businesses should budget for the dip.

Fourth, design the remedy before the regulator does. DPG’s foundation-based editorial independence structure turned a potential prohibition into a conditional clearance. RTL and Talpa, who offered promises rather than structures, were blocked.

Fifth, scale in one country is not a strategy; scale in a capability is. DPG’s Ad Alliance, Brand Metrics integration and shared subscription technology are what make a €1.1 billion broadcaster acquisition and a €142 million streaming add-on pay off, not the Dutch market itself.

Finally, be aware of the ceiling. DPG now owns so much of Dutch media that its next large Dutch acquisition will face a far higher bar, and its 2026 encounter with the medicines regulator shows how concentration attracts enforcement from every side. Mediahuis’s choice to spread across Ireland, Germany and Luxembourg is the alternative path: smaller in any one market, less exposed to any one regulator. Both models are working in 2026; the next decade will show which is more durable.

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