Josimar, originally a football print magazine launched in 2009 in Norway, is the world’s only media platform devoted solely to investigative football journalism. We’re a collective of award-winning journalists from all corners of the world who report on the darker side of the most popular sport on the planet.
Because of its astonishing popularity, lax governance and the huge sums of money which circulate in its economy, football exerts a magnetic attraction on governments and politicians, opaque businesses, organised crime and countries with dreadful human rights records. Football has become a haven for money launderers, tax evaders and fraudsters, as well as the trigger for multiple human rights abuses.
Still, mainstream media cover football almost solely as entertainment, hampered as they are by their mutually beneficial relationship (as rights-holders, for example) with clubs, leagues, sponsors and organisations such as governing body Fifa. The need to nurture these relationships and secure the all-important ‘access’ has transformed so-called reputable newspapers into infotainment portals where traffic and clicks trump relevance and public interest.
A number of very powerful people within football would be very happy to see us gone. Josimar has been threatened with a number of lawsuits by some of the most influential actors in the game. Fifa, former Fifa president Sepp Blatter, the betting industry and the Supreme Committee, the organising committee of the World Cup in Qatar, to name a few, have had their lawyers trying to intimidate us, to no avail.
Their threats made us even more motivated to continue on the same path, and the rigorous sourcing and fact-checking of our stories has ensured that Josimar has never had to stand in court to defend our investigative journalism.
A constantly expanding reach
Josimar’s readership has constantly increased since its English language website was launched in November 2018. This readership, which doubled between 2019 and 2021, doubled again in 2022.
Josimar’s geographical reach has expanded accordingly. In 2018, half of the visitors to its website came from Josimar’s home country, Norway. That proportion is now under 10 percent, and there are now more Josimar readers in the USA than in Norway itself.
Today Josimar attracts readers from countries as diverse as Australia, Korea, Haiti, Qatar, Kenya, India, Poland, the US and the Comoros. And these are committed readers: analysis of anonymised visitors data show that each of them spends an exceptionally high amount of time on the pages they visit: Josimar is the very antithesis of clickbait.
