Brian & Eamon Fallon

The brothers were born in 1977 and 1982 respectively and were raised in Rathgar, on the southside of Dublin. They are 50:50 shareholders in DML Capital, the largest shareholder (76%) in Journal Media Limited.
The Fallon Brothers are also the main shareholders in Distilled Media Limited which owns a further 13% of Journal media Limited. Both brothers have acted as CEO at the various incarnations of DML Capital.

As of 2023, Eamonn Fallon is also the Chief Executive Officer of Distilled Limited. Distilled grew out of DAFT.ie (Dublin Area Flats and Tenancies), a school project set up by Brian Fallon in 1997 to offer online listings for Dublin area property rentals. It was initially intended to be short lived (three months). Prompted by the emerging Celtic Tiger-related property boom, DAFT.ie hosted online classified ads listing properties for sale and rent. Initially focused on the Dublin area and rentals, it expanded in 2003 to include property sales.

Between 1997 and 2001, daft.ie ran on “auto-pilot” as the Fallon Brothers completed their education. Brian decided not to immediately fully commercialise the site and went to study Engineering at Trinity College Dublin while his older brother Eamonn studied Electronic Engineering in College and did a masters in Computer Science, before deciding to work and travel in Australia. He entered the tech industry during the dotcom boom and worked for a number of startups including Labyrinth and Cape Clear Software.Upon graduation, and with Eamonn returned home, the pair established Daft Media Limited (initially 90% owned by Brian and 10% by Eamonnn) to put the site on a commercial footing. Daft Media Limited was established In September 2001 to properly commercialise the operation. By 2006, Daft.ie claimed to be the largest property website in Ireland carrying up to 30,000 listings and attracting over half a million visitors each month. In consequence, the site began to attract take-over interests and was valued at €10-15m although the brothers made it clear that they were not interested in selling the site.The Fallon brothers also own shares in Distilled Limited, a 50:50 joint venture with the Norwegian Schibsted group.

Distilled Limited owns the leading online classified advertising websites in Ireland (Adverts.ie, DAFT.ie, Donedeal.ie and gumtree.ie ). The joint venture was established in 2015 when Distilled pooled their ownership of Advert.ie and Daft.ie with Schibsted’s 100% ownership of Donedeal.ie (which they had acquired from the site’s Irish founders in 2011) into Digital Media Venture Limited (since renamed as Distilled Limited). 

Eamonn currently lives in Dublin with his wife and three children. Outside Distilled Limited he has acted as Chair of IABIReland (Internet Advisory Board, a lobby group for the online advertising sector) from 2010 until 2017.

TheJournal.ie’s immediate owner, Journal Media Limited has five shareholders. DML Capital owns the largest single share with 76%. DML Capital is in turn owned in its entirety by the Fallon Brothers. (Both have 50% shareholdings.) The second largest shareholder in Journal Media Limited is Distilled Media Group Limited. The largest shareholder in the Distilled Media Group Limited is, again, DML Capital with a shareholding of 80.69%. The Fallon Brothers directly own a further 6.98% of the Distilled Media Group Limited. If we sum the Fallon Brothers interests in Journal Media through their direct and indirect ownership of DML Capital and the Distilled Media Group Limited, their total shareholding comes to 88.6%.