Belfast Live

About Belfast Live

Belfast Live is Northern Ireland's biggest commercial news website, the digital-first news brand that pioneered Reach plc's "Live" model of regional publishing. Launched in 2015 by Trinity Mirror — now Reach plc — it was the first "Live" news brand the publisher ever created, and its success provided the template for dozens of sister sites subsequently rolled out across England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. Based in Belfast, the site covers the capital and Northern Ireland with rolling news, sport, entertainment and lifestyle content, and in 2025 it celebrated its tenth anniversary as the best-read commercial news website in Northern Ireland, according to Ipsos Iris.

The site's achievement is all the more remarkable for the market it entered: one of the UK's most competitive local news environments, home to three daily newspapers, a richly resourced BBC Northern Ireland operation and a thriving commercial radio sector. Starting from nothing — with just two reporters — BelfastLive grew within seven years to reach 49 per cent of Northern Ireland's entire online population. Edited by Sheena McStravick, who joined as one of those two launch reporters, it remains the flagship of Reach's Irish digital operation alongside Dublin Live, RSVP Live, Cork Beo and Galway Beo.

History and Founding

BelfastLive was launched in 2015 by Trinity Mirror as a digital-only local news title — a bold experiment in a market the company had never operated in. The vision was to create a news brand that would accurately reflect Northern Ireland and its capital city in news terms, built from scratch for the digital and social-media age rather than adapted from a legacy newspaper.

The launch team was tiny: two reporters, one of them Sheena McStravick, who would rise to become editor, the other Sarah Scott, now deputy editor. From those beginnings the site grew rapidly, and within a few years it had become Northern Ireland's biggest commercial news site. By January 2021 it was recording 1.2 million total unique visitors in a month, and by January 2022 it hit 22.6 million page views in a single month, with 4.1 million users — 75 per cent of them returning readers.

The site's tenth anniversary was celebrated in 2025 with a party attended by more than 100 people at the Dark Horse pub in Belfast city centre — journalists, photographers, commercial staff, partners and managers past and present. McStravick described it as a full-circle moment: "10 years is a huge milestone for a website that was a completely unknown entity emerging amidst a very competitive news market in Northern Ireland, dominated by legacy titles. But we made our mark."

Mission and Coverage Focus

BelfastLive's founding mission was to be a news brand accurately reflecting Northern Ireland and its capital — a voice for all communities in a society still navigating the legacy of conflict. Its coverage spans breaking news, politics, crime and courts, business, health, education and community life, alongside sport — including Irish League football, GAA, Ulster Rugby and boxing — and a large entertainment, food and What's On operation.

The site has invested in specialist reporting to deepen its coverage: it appointed its first dedicated political reporter — the former Irish News journalist Brendan Hughes — at the end of 2020, signalling a commitment to strengthening its journalism at the heart of Northern Ireland's distinctive power-sharing politics, and its first dedicated GAA reporter at the beginning of 2022. Sub-brands have extended its reach into new areas: "Be," launched in late summer 2020 as a home for female lifestyle content covering health, beauty, work, parenting, careers, cooking and fashion; and in 2022 the local sub-brands MyDerry, MyTyrone and MyFermanagh, plus DogsLive.

The editorial proposition combines the speed and accessibility of digital-first publishing with an explicit commitment to serving all of Northern Ireland's communities — a significant promise in a divided society.

Ownership and Funding

BelfastLive is owned by Reach plc, the London Stock Exchange-listed publisher formed as Trinity Mirror in 1999 and renamed in 2018. Reach is the UK's largest commercial news publisher, with national titles including the Daily Mirror, Daily Express and Daily Star, and its Irish operation — BelfastLive, Dublin Live, RSVP Live, Cork Beo and Galway Beo — makes it one of the largest digital publishers on the island of Ireland.

The site is funded through digital advertising, sold by Reach Solutions Northern Ireland to local and national advertisers, alongside content marketing and commercial partnerships. Group sales director Cherith Andrews has described BelfastLive as popular among advertisers as well as readers, noting that it is the only Northern Ireland brand able to reach all communities at grassroots level and particularly popular with younger audiences — "an essential part of the local media mix."

The commercial success of the Belfast experiment was the proof of concept for the entire Live network: Reach's 2019 announcement of a major expansion — at least seven new launches and 46 new journalism jobs — explicitly built on the Belfast model, with chief executive Jim Mullen citing the rapid growth of the Live brands as the justification for investment.

Editorial Approach

BelfastLive practises high-volume, digital-first local journalism: rolling news throughout the day and night — its journalists work 365 days a year — live blogs for breaking stories, and heavy distribution through Facebook and other social platforms where Northern Irish audiences spend their time. The newsroom is organised for speed without, in the editor's telling, sacrificing the trust readers place in the brand.

The editorial approach reflects the sensitivities of the Northern Ireland market: reporting that serves all communities, avoids partisan framing, and holds power to account across the political spectrum. McStravick has described the site's constant commitments as serving all communities and holding those in power to account — principles tested daily in a polity where journalism's impartiality is intensely scrutinised.

The balance of content — hard news and politics alongside lifestyle, entertainment and sport — follows the Live network formula: the serious journalism that justifies the brand's civic role, funded by the scale audiences for consumer content that sustain the commercial model.

Audience and Reach

BelfastLive's audience figures are the most striking of any regional site in these islands. According to Ipsos Iris, by January 2022 it had become Northern Ireland's biggest commercial news site, reaching 49 per cent of the entire online population — a larger share than any competitor. That month the site recorded over 22.6 million page views, with 4.1 million users accessing it for the latest news, 75 per cent of them returning readers — a loyalty figure that speaks to the site's embeddedness in daily life.

A year earlier, in January 2021, the site had recorded 1.2 million total unique visitors in the month, then described by industry press as making it Northern Ireland's biggest commercial news site by Comscore measurement. The trajectory from a two-reporter start-up in 2015 to half the online population within seven years is one of the great growth stories of British regional digital journalism.

The site's appeal to younger audiences — the "elusive" demographic prized by advertisers — has been a particular commercial strength, with its social-first distribution and lifestyle content drawing readers who rarely engage with legacy news brands.

Digital Innovation

As the first Live brand, BelfastLive was the laboratory in which Reach developed the model it would roll out across the UK and Ireland: the county/city-wide digital brand, the "In Your Area" hyperlocal filtering, the live-blog-led breaking news operation, the social-first distribution, and the sub-brand strategy for lifestyle verticals.

The site's sub-brands represent continuing digital innovation: "Be," the female-focused lifestyle vertical launched in late summer 2020, whose editor described its launch as "a dream come true," and the 2022 launches of MyDerry, MyTyrone, MyFermanagh and DogsLive, extending the brand into geographic and interest-based niches. Each sub-brand is an attempt to deepen engagement with specific audience segments within the overall BelfastLive platform.

The site's app, newsletters and push alerts complete the digital toolkit, building direct audience relationships alongside the social distribution that powered its initial growth.

Notable Coverage

BelfastLive has covered the defining stories of Northern Ireland's last decade: the collapse and restoration of the Stormont institutions, the Renewable Heat Incentive scandal, the Brexit negotiations and the Northern Ireland Protocol in all their tortuous complexity, the centenaries and commemorations, and the everyday realities of post-conflict society.

Its political reporting — strengthened by the appointment of a dedicated political reporter in 2020 — navigates the intricacies of power-sharing, while its court and crime reporting covers a society where the legacy of the Troubles still surfaces in dissident violence, paramilitary activity and the work of the legacy institutions. Sport coverage spans the Irish League, the GAA county scene, Ulster Rugby and a boxing tradition that has produced world champions.

The site's community reporting — the human stories, the charity appeals, the celebrations of local life — reflects its founding mission to mirror Northern Ireland back to itself in all its richness and diversity.

Community Impact

BelfastLive's impact lies in having created, from nothing, a genuinely cross-community news platform in one of the world's most divided media markets. Its claim — backed by its audience figures — to reach all communities at grassroots level represents a significant civic achievement: a shared news source in a society where media consumption has often followed communal lines.

The site's journalists, photographers and editors have become fixtures of Belfast life over the decade, and the tenth-anniversary celebration — more than 100 people gathered in a city-centre pub — testified to the human infrastructure behind the brand. McStravick paid tribute to "the incredible people who make up our team — journalists, photographers, editors, commercial and marketing teams and partners, senior managers and those who have poured their hearts into ensuring that Belfast's stories, in all their richness and diversity, are told and celebrated."

For Northern Ireland's media economy, BelfastLive demonstrated that digital-only local journalism could succeed commercially against entrenched legacy competition — a lesson Reach applied across its subsequent launches.

Awards and Recognition

BelfastLive won Best Regional News Site at The Drum Awards for Online Media in 2021, industry recognition of its editorial and commercial achievement. The award confirmed the site's standing not just as a Northern Ireland success but as a UK-wide exemplar of digital regional publishing.

Its audience leadership — biggest commercial news site in Northern Ireland by both Comscore and Ipsos Iris measurement — is itself a form of recognition, voted daily by millions of readers. The tenth-anniversary coverage in 2025, including tributes from across Reach and the wider industry, marked its status as the founding site of the Live network that reshaped British local digital news.

Recent Developments

The tenth anniversary in 2025 was BelfastLive's landmark recent moment: a celebration of a decade's growth from two reporters to Northern Ireland's best-read commercial news brand, with editor Sheena McStravick — there since day one — leading tributes to the team. Reach marked the occasion as the anniversary of the launch that "set the foundations" for its subsequent expansion across Ireland and Great Britain.

Looking ahead, the site continues to invest in its platform and audiences, with the sub-brand strategy — MyDerry, MyTyrone, MyFermanagh, DogsLive — pointing toward ever more targeted community coverage within the overall brand. As the media landscape evolves, McStravick has said, the constants remain the commitments of the start: serving all communities and holding power to account. A decade after its launch into one of the UK's toughest news markets, BelfastLive stands as the proof that the Live model works.