A French media brand hopes to rival the likes of Politico on the EU policy news stage with an English-language expansion.
Contexte, which launched 12 years ago, covers French public policy news across eight verticals: powers (decision-makers and the legislature), energy, transport, environment, agriculture, health, tech and media.
Its output comes via morning briefings, scoops and analysis, and is accompanied by an automated monitoring service to keep professionals updated on anything relevant to them happening in the French Parliament as well as AI-generated transcriptions of parliamentary sessions.
All of the publisher’s revenue comes from subscriptions, with no advertising or sponsorship. It also receives some grants, including €289,000 last year from the French Ministry of Culture’s fund to support media pluralism.
Contexte has 1,500 organisations as customers, through which about 14,000 readers have access. About two-thirds are in the private sector and one-third are public sector.
Chief executive and co-founder Jean-Christophe Boulanger told Press Gazette: “In 2013 we tried three business models: subscriptions, ads and sponsored events… and I noticed that subscriptions was really the thing that I saw the most potential in.
“We were a small company at the time. I wanted to focus and so I made a bet on subscriptions, if you will. I thought that if we wanted to do ads well, or events well, we had to invest and create whole teams and I preferred to create a team specialised in subscriptions.”
Boulanger said the focus on subscriptions also meant Contexte’s “editorial independence can be the strongest possible”.
He said that although the company had a slow start, it reached €1m in revenue within four years. In 2024 Contexte reported revenue of €10.7m, up 32% year on year.
Contexte is now rolling out an expansion into the EU market.
Although it already had 18 journalists in Brussels, they were covering EU affairs with a view to how they would affect the French market specifically, and writing in French.
From 13 May Contexte will start to also cover “what’s decided in Brussels that can have an impact on the whole European Union“, publishing in English.
The first vertical to launch will be energy, with the second, as yet-undecided, subject area to come in November and others to follow.
Boulanger said it would be a slow rollout because the company can “invest only what we earn”.
He added that this mirrors how Contexte grew in France: “This way, we can really adapt our offering to the need of our readers. We can take the time we need to find the right team, the right tone, the right editorial parameters, the right processes. We are ambitious, but we like to take time as well.”
The main competitors in the EU market identified by Boulanger include Axel Springer’s Politico, which he described as “the main player on the EU policy field”, Euractiv, which was bought by Mediahuis in 2023, Euronews and MLex.
Boulanger said that although the EU is therefore a “bustling niche… I do think our way of covering things can be preferred by part of the market,” he said. “We really focus heavily on facts. We try our best to spare the time of our reader…
“We also are very granular. We don’t mind going deeply in analysis. We are geeks. It’s for geeks. We also are only focused on bringing information. We don’t sell influence through ads or events and I think that can be reassuring in a way. In the last years, I think we’ve demonstrated in Brussels that we can bring a lot of leaks.
“But I do love to have those competitors. I respect very much what they do, and I think Politico has had great impact in Brussels since its launch ten years ago bringing more transparency. So we will try to bring even more transparency.”
Before the new EU product, Contexte had a team of 100 people, just over half of whom were journalists.
The new EU team will have five journalists working on energy, led by former Euronews senior finance reporter Jack Schickler as managing editor. Two more people are being recruited to work alongside the two people based in Brussels already covering EU energy policy.
They will be supported by a translation/editing team, a new sales team of three people (including former Politico Europe senior sales executive Katherine Donato who joined in February) and an office manager.
Contexte has also hired former Glassdoor France managing director Clémentine Soilly as chief sales officer to help lead the overall company’s commercial offering, both with its international expansion and with continued growth in France.
Contexte was profitable (€277,000 net income and €992,000 EBITDA) in 2024, 2022 and 2021, but not in 2023 or 2020. Boulanger said: “Our strategy so far was to reinvest everything.”
Contexte almost broke even if subsidies are excluded for the first time last year, with a shortfall of €15,000.
Also in 2024 the company celebrated having an operational cashflow of €1m for the first time.
Contexte is fully owned by its staff with no external investors. Boulanger owns two-thirds of the shares and about 60 members of the team own the rest.
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