World’s richest Jew buys half of free Israeli daily

Sheldon Adelson, the richest Jew in the world, believes in the momentum of ‘metro’ newspapers, which are financed by advertising and distributed for free, mostly on buses and trains. Israeli business magazine TheMarker has learned that Adelson, whose net worth is estimated at USD 15.6bn (EUR 12.6bn), recently purchased 50 per cent of the newspaper Yisraeli, which is owned by businessman Shlomo Ben-Zvi. The paper is distributed free of charge on Israel Railways trains and Egged bus lines, at Delek filling stations and at business centres. This is Adelson’s first investment in Israel, and will amount to an estimated USD 15m (EUR 12m) over the next three years. Adelson said his goal is to reach a circulation of 200,000 copies a day and to surpass Maariv, Israel’s second-largest daily newspaper, both in terms of advertising (about 25 per cent of all newspaper advertising), with annual revenues of about USD 100m (EUR 81m), and in terms of weekday exposure - estimated at 10-18 per cent of newspaper readers. Currently 130,000 copies of Yisraeli are printed a day, and the newspaper has 16-20 pages. The paper focuses on general news and colour stories presented as short news items of up to 300 words, accompanied by photos. This format is tailored to the brief reading time available to Israeli bus and train passengers - about 22 minutes, according to Ben-Zvi. (Haaretz,April 25, 2006)

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