Press release translated from VAVEL España. Read the original in Spanish here.
Over the past 30 days, VAVEL has received 1,051,086 unique visits, being the 5th most read sports newspaper in Spain. For us, it is a milestone. The result of believing in the power of improbable dreams.
| Ranking of sports websites in Spain by unique users per month: | Unique Users per month |
| 1. MARCA.com | 6.294.000 |
| 2. AS.com | 4.152.000 |
| 3. SPORT.es | 1.780.000 |
| 4. Mundodeportivo.com | 1.096.000 |
| 5. VAVEL.com | 1.051.086 |
| 6. Yahoo Sports | 1.039.000 |
The history of VAVEL is like that of a rain drop, humble but well-directed, that was able to grow into a tremendous ocean. We began programming and writing from a bedroom in a neighborhood in the south of Madrid, from the humility of necessity as the greatest motivator, from the layoffs that provoked unemployment and the frustration with those irresponsible, reckless, and unable to develop creative ideas, who have controlled the press and the media outlets for many years, who only see journalism not for what it is, but how it contributes to the balance sheet.
Day after day in our kiosks, radios, and televisions, vulgar spectacles were permitted, and continue to be permitted, were incited, and continue to be incited by those who occupy the seats and press boxes of our profession, humiliating every day the thousands of journalists that were left out in the crisis, without a logical explanation as to why this industry invested in these types of controversial audience generators, far away from what you could call journalists, instead of investing in those committed to true journalism.
That is the sin of which they are not conscious, but it will be judged as the press of our age in our history.
VAVEL was a response to that overbearing world - an uprising, rather than continuing to live on our knees.
"VAVEL is not just a newspaper, VAVEL is a movement". Our independence and individual character guarantees that the status quo will not cease in its attempts to block our path, but it also guarantees that we need not give thanks to anyone, because we have achieved this milestone without any hands other than our own, without any help from outside, only with talent and hard work, and outside of this rotten system that languishes - although they still are owners of an advertising monopoly, one of the few valuable things this current system still possesses.
Because VAVEL was born with the ingredient to reverse this moral decadence of the big media outlets, and instead of complaining, we worked with intensity on the idea to create something new, to offer a solution to the problem we saw and were suffering from. The problem that was creating a sad system which we decided to leave in order to create a new one. And today we can proudly say that we can look eye to eye with the old system from the new path that we created.
Everyone said it was impossible. And it’s that VAVEL is an impossibility, but it is now a reality. Now the only thing missing is brands and advertisements joining with the spirit of this movement, in truth. Today, for the first time in the history of this newspaper, we can shout to the world, with tremendous pride and happiness, but still conscious that the best is yet to come, that we reached a million different homes in the last 30 days.
We can only thank our writers that placed their hopes firmly in a sports newspaper that tries to simply be that, sports journalism faithful to the values of respect: respect for talent, discourse, and dedication.
We end by informing you that we are already preparing the latest updates, the New VAVEL that we have been preparing for 8 months. It will see the light before the end of 2013 or at the start of 2014, and just as we promised to revolutionize sports journalism with the New VAVEL launched in 2012, in this New VAVEL of 2014 we promise not just to revolutionize sports journalism, but to change the concept of what a media outlet can be.
And to you, the reader, we give you 1 million THANK YOUS!