TimesLIVE

South African center-right

Background

TimesLIVE launched on 20 June 2007 as the digital companion to The Times, a daily print newspaper that was itself an offshoot of the Sunday Times — South Africa's oldest and highest-circulating weekly paper. The Times print edition was distributed free to Sunday Times subscribers in its early years, charging non-subscribers R2.50 a copy. In November 2017, then-owner Tiso Blackstar Group (formerly Times Media Group) announced it would shut the print edition; in early 2018 it was replaced by a premium digital-only product called Times Select, while TimesLIVE continued as the free, ad-supported web platform. In 2019, Lebashe Investment Group bought Tiso Blackstar's South African media portfolio — including the Sunday Times, Business Day, Sowetan, and Financial Mail — for roughly R1.05 billion and rebranded the holding entity as Arena Holdings. TimesLIVE is now the second-largest news website in South Africa. Media Bias/Fact Check rates it right-center by South African standards, noting editorial positions that tend to align with the country's more market-oriented political voices, and assesses its factual reporting as mostly reliable with a clean third-party fact-check record. The outlet covers South African politics, crime, courts, business, sport, and entertainment, and has a track record of investigative reporting on state corruption.

Sources

1. TimesLIVE – Wikipedia
2. TimesLive – Arena Holdings
3. Arena Holdings – Wikipedia
4. Times of South Africa (Times Live) – Media Bias/Fact Check
5. It's official: Arena Holdings is the new owner of Sunday Times, Business Day, Sowetan
6. Lebashe enters the media with its new entity Arena Holdings

Profile compiled 2026-09-08; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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