The government’s propaganda factory will advertise Hungarian tourism abroad

The Hungarian firms New Land Media and Századvég are mainly known for their production of the Orbán-regime’s state-funded propaganda campaigns, but this is not their only source of income. They are about to be awarded public contracts to advertise Hungarian tourism for at least half a billion HUFs.

On 24 December, the National Communications Office (NKOH) launched a public procurement procedure for the Visit Hungary National Tourism Organisation Nonprofit Zrt. and Kisfaludy2030 Tourism Development Nonprofit Zrt. for media and research related tasks. The winning company will be responsible for “promoting Hungary for tourism purposes, strengthening inbound tourism from abroad, addressing higher status travellers and the domestic population, communicating the development of Hungarian tourism services to the appropriate target groups”.

The tasks include the implementation and assessment of campaigns as well as printing of posters and other materials that would be distributed in Hungary as wll as many forein countries, including the United States, China, South Korea, Israel, Brazil, Mexico, India, and various European countries.

It is expected that 6 individual contracts will be concluded over the duration of the framework agreement, of which at least one will be for a minimum period of 9 months.

A foregone conclusion

Exactly how much this will cost is not yet clear from publicly available documents. What is telling, however, is that according to the description the average value of the contracts will be in excess of HUF 100 million net, or even several times that amount.

In other words, if only the minimum, i.e. the 6 contracts, is taken into account, the value of the framework agreement will already exceed half a billion forints. But the total will almost certainly be much higher, in the billions. The framework agreement is for 12 months, renewable twice.

Only two companies applied: New Land Media Kft. and Roxer Kommunikációs Ügynökség Kft. with a partner called Media Dynamics Kft. Roxer was quickly disqualified, so New Land Media won the contract. They will subcontract Századvég Centre for Public Knowledge Foundation, a research organization known mainly for their polling on behalf of the ruling Fidesz party.

New Land Media, led by Gyula Balásy is one of the two chief producer of the Orbán government’s propaganda campaigns,

including the blue billboards that regularly blanket the country, such as the series of posters vilifying George Soros,

interpreted by many as an anti-semitic dogwhistle.

The communications bid was announced with extremely strict conditions. Only companies that had, among other things, over 2,5 billion HUF (6,48 million USD) income from public procurement, and at least 4 reference works for media planning and buying tasks with a minimum net value of HUF 50 million each. This means that the bid was practically tailor-made for New Land, a company with strong ties to Fidesz that wins most public comminication tasks. The conditions guaranteed that no other company on the Hungarian market was even eligible to run.

No real competition in communication bids

When it comes to public communication contracts, bids tailored for specific pro-government companies are more the norm than exception. For example, Balásy’s companies also won bids by the national Foundation for Research in Central and Eastern European History and Society in 2019 and 2021. Then in 2024, the Foundation launched another public procurement procedure for communication tasks, and simply copied the text of the earlier tenders, only changing the year and amount of money. No suprise, the contract was once again awarded to Balásy’s companies. In this case, the Balásy-firms also ran against Roxer, which is incidentally ran by thegovernment commissioner for wine marketing Pál Rókusfalvy.

The outcome was already foreshadowed by the call for tenders, as the eligibility criteria for the Foundation’s previous similar tender were almost identical to those of the current call. That tender was also won by Balásy’s companies.

Gyula Balásy, born in 1979, founded Lounge Design Ltd. in 2004 and worked for Fidesz as early as 2005, and helped the party win the 2010 parliamentary elections. After this, Balásy’s firms became a regular beneficiary of government advertising contracts. A significant part of the two firms’ revenues comes mainly from the National Communications Office, overseen by Antal Rogán, who in January was put on a US sanctions list for his role in widespread corruption.

Over the years, New Land Media Kft. and Lounge Design Kft. have won a total of HUF 293.7 billion (USD 760 million) worth of government contracts in recent years without any meaningful competition.

This seems to be so problematic that a police investigation has been launched against the National Communications Office, also overseen by Rogán.

According to HVG, the police are investigating whether, if there were real competition, it could happen that the same group of companies has won almost three quarters of state communications contracts for a decade. The investigation, which started last summer, is still in the discovery phase. The suspicion is that the state-owned operator has restricted competition and misappropriated public funds, causing significant financial loss.