The Rest Is... world domination? Gary Lineker’s podcast empire plots its next move

The presenter may be leaving ‘Match of the Day’ but his media stable just keeps on growing – can it crack America and beyond? Nick Hilton visits its offices to find out

Gary Lineker’s media empire is located just down the hallway from a room dedicated to “therapy puppies”, a litter of golden retrievers brought in to boost residents of the office block’s self-esteem. While start-up founders coo over little labradors, the team behind the most successful slate of British podcasts in recent history are quietly finessing their conquest of current affairs broadcasting.

Everyone is talking about Goalhanger Podcasts, at least in recent months. It’s gone from one of many mid-sized British podcast companies to the standard bearers for an entire industry. Founded, back in 2019 as an offshoot of Goalhanger Films, a TV production company set up by Lineker, its breakthrough hit was The Rest Is History, hosted by popular ancient historian Tom Holland and equally popular modern historian Dominic Sandbrook. An unlikely segue, for a sports-focused outfit, but one that has had enormous impact on everything from the Match of the Day line-up to the public reputation of New Labour spin doctors.

“All our backgrounds, Tony [Pastor], Gary and myself,” says Goalhanger’s managing director and co-founder Jack Davenport (not the Pirates of the Caribbean actor), “we all came from old school broadcasters.” That trio – rounded out by Pastor, a former controller of sport at ITV – realised there was an opportunity outside the BBC, and other public broadcasters, to build something distinctive. “The opportunities we saw were in areas like history and politics, which were a lot less crowded than sports.” And the rest, as they say, is history. Or should that be politics?

Because even though Holland and Sandbrook’s show has become one of the biggest in the podosphere (and plays well internationally), it wasn’t until the launch of The Rest Is Politics in May 2022 that the brand went stratospheric. The pairing of Tony Blair’s press secretary Alastair Campbell and former Tory leadership contender Rory Stewart seemed, on paper, an improbable coalition. Aside from their mismatched politics, Campbell is pugnacious and domineering whereas Stewart is nebbish and deferential. If it were a romcom, their chemistry wouldn’t have been apparent until the third act.

But life isn’t a romcom (sadly) and the pairing of Campbell and Stewart proved to be inspired from the off. In spite of some differences in diagnosis and remedy, they both fight their politics firmly from the centre ground. Back in June 2017 (five prime ministers ago), when the whole Goalhanger endeavour was just a glint in the star striker’s eye, Lineker tweeted about his dissatisfaction with political discourse. “Anyone else feel politically homeless?” he wrote. “Everything seems far right or way left. Something sensibly centrist might appeal?”

Less than seven years later, people who empathised with Lineker’s tweet have a new home. Lineker is considered a pioneer in what has, sniffily, been referred to as “dadcasting”. That label pays homage to the “centrist dad” stereotype: middle class, middle age, middle ground. If such a thing truly exists, then Goalhanger is their Shangri-La. The Rest Is Politics has been an extravagant success, with a reported 700,000 listeners, live shows selling out the Royal Albert Hall and O2 Arena, and rumoured earnings by the hosts that would be enough to make the ghost of Lord Reith turn his back on the BBC (a large man in a black suit and dark sunglasses warns me not to ask for specifics on money).

The show has led to two spin-offs: a series of leadership powwows, Leading, and an American-focused sibling, The Rest Is Politics US, with Anthony Scaramucci, Donald Trump’s short-lived communications director, and Katty Kay, a veteran BBC correspondent. Scaramucci has described their chemistry as “like John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John doing a podcast, but in character. I’m driving her crazy with my poor manners and my New York Italian accent.” And yet, on 5 November, the show topping the UK podcast charts wasn’t the BBC’s Americast or Crooked’s Pod Save America. It was Scaramucci and Kay’s all-singing, all-dancing bipartisan extravaganza.

Gary Lineker is best known for hosting ‘Match of the Day’ for the last quarter of a century (PA Archive)

And it is America that is proving the big lure for Davenport and co. “My ambition is to make a really significant media business worldwide,” he tells me. “We’ve never deliberately made content for an American audience yet, so we need to start trying to do that and just learn some lessons.” While The Rest Is Politics is a huge domestic success, international listeners are, understandably, less interested in the minutiae of Westminster horse-trading. The Rest Is Politics US, meanwhile, was consciously marketed towards British Americophiles, and its overwhelmingly British audience reflects this. It has left Goalhanger a big fish – the sort of giant catfish that bemused anglers pose with for local newspapers – in a very medium-sized pond.

But since it was announced, last week, that Lineker would be leaving Match of the Day at the end of the season, and the BBC as a whole once his commitments at the 2026 World Cup are fulfilled, the questions of what he does next, and what Goalhanger does next, have become inextricably linked. Alastair Campbell, sent to the crease on the Today programme, opted for a straight bat over his customary spin. “Whether this will allow him to focus on the stuff he’s doing with his Goalhanger company,” Campbell told the show, “I don’t know.”

And yet, the question – and Campbell’s response – is telling. There’s a presumption that Lineker will now focus on “his” company. Speculation has been rife about overseas expansion, precipitating an unprecedented deluge of media articles (like this one). “We’re flavour of the month,” Davenport confesses. “Apart from certain sections of the media who have an issue with Gary.” And those sections of the, predominantly tabloid, press are not quiet: for all that he has tried to position himself bang in the centre, there will always be some who see him as a left-winger.

Of course, America is not an easy market to capture – just ask Robbie Williams or the sport of “football”. For the 2024 US presidential election, Goalhanger packed Campbell and Stewart off to Spotify’s HQ in New York where they broadcast all night (rather counterintuitively) on YouTube. Those livestreams (a collaboration with other Goalhanger stars like Scaramucci, Sandbrook and The Rest Is Entertainment host Marina Hyde) have reached more than a million viewers, and they mark a significant deviation from the UK general election, back in July, where The Rest Is Politics loaned its talent to Channel 4 for the evening. “We turned down the opportunity to go back on Channel 4,” Davenport reveals, of their election planning this November. “We wanted to challenge traditional broadcasters at their own game.”

The “America Decides” livestream by The Rest Is“supergroup” received a mixed response. Stewart, in particular, was lampooned for his overconfidence about a Harris victory. But such things are good television: just ask Alastair Campbell, who ended up eating a (chocolate) kilt after misjudging the 2015 exit poll. It all rather raises the question as to whether Goalhanger is going to be a podcast company for much longer.

“We are definitely evolving the way we talk about what we make, away from the word ‘podcast’,” Davenport tells me. “That still conjures audio in people’s minds, so we’re now talking about ‘shows’, because everything we launch now is going to be video as well as audio.” This is in line with a general industry feeling that the future is – once again – video. Spotify, by some metrics the biggest podcasting company in the world, has made clear that video is its priority in 2025, as it is for the Goalhanger guys. And so, it feels like a full circle moment: the TV company that became a podcasting powerhouse, returning to its roots.

Tony Blair’s former spokesman and the ex-Conservative minister have made waves with ‘The Rest is Politics’ (AFP/Getty)

But none of this is easy. Competing internationally, and with good ol’ fashioned TV broadcasters, requires both clout and resources. Goalhanger’s PR guru, Andy Neilson, shows me around its offices in Kennington, located on the ground floor of a co-working space. The team have grown from 15 in 2023 to 42 at the present moment, and next year they’re occupying further space within the same building. But, despite the therapy puppies and the fact that Mike Tindall and James Haskell (the former England rugby stars turned podcasters) are drinking coffee at the table behind us, this doesn’t feel like the centre of the media universe.

In a meeting room, three producers huddle around a laptop. They’re recording a remote episode of Empire, hosted by the BBC presenter and author Anita Anand and historian William Dalrymple. Most of Goalhanger’s 40-strong cohort work on the production side, with only a few dedicated to development, marketing and sales (the latter of which is largely managed by Spotify). Spotify is also responsible for much of the company’s recording bandwidth, offering the team access to its studios and engineers. And so, the company can still broadcast to millions of people each month with a fairly lean team: each show has just one or two permanent producers, plus a revolving pool of assistant producers.

But is it enough to challenge stateside? The week of my visit, the buzz in the office is around the launch of The Rest Is Classified, which is only Goalhanger’s second new product of the year. It joins a stable of titles including The Rest Is Football, The Rest Is Money and The Rest Is Entertainment. The naming recipe is easy to parody but has given each show enormous “day one” cut-through – so much so that my local pub quiz recently had a round dedicated to naming them. All the same, it is not an infinitely repeatable process, and each new show necessarily dilutes the impact. Are Americans, who deal in brash, jingoistic slogans like – well, you know the one – ready for something as British as twee wordplay?

So, beyond quippy titles, The Rest Is team will be hoping that they can offer America something new for an increasingly fraught and polarised marketplace. On the one hand, you have the megalithic Joe Rogan Experience, which backed Donald Trump and will likely top the end-of-year podcast charts. On the other, you have Crooked Media, founded by former Obama staffers Jon Favreau (not the Iron Man actor), Jon Lovett and Tommy Vietor. They form ideological blocs at either end of the spectrum, and Goalhanger, perhaps, believes that it can straddle them.

The man at the centre of this expansion will, inevitably, be Lineker, who is soon to find himself with more time on his hands. “There’s not many people in the UK media industry we can’t have a conversation with,” Davenport admits. “Sometimes that would just mean Gary DM-ing someone on Instagram to start the conversation.” But Lineker’s cachet is unlikely to stretch to the US and beyond, and there has been talk of American investors, like RedBird Capital, sniffing around the company, especially after being rebuffed for legacy brands like The Spectator and the Telegraph. A full-scale British invasion will require the landing craft of talent, not to mention the artillery support of funding.

Lineker with Alan Shearer and Micah Richards on ‘The Rest Is Football’ (Goalhanger)

Yet 2024 is already proving to be the year that podcasting exited its lane. Recent weeks have seen staff strikes and top columnist resignations at the venerable Observer newspaper, in protest at a purported sale to audio start-up Tortoise (which plays on a similar field to Goalhanger, to a smaller audience). Has anyone at Goalhanger talked about a similar shift towards print? The Rest Is Ink And Paper? “Why would we need to?” Davenport responds. “Maybe this is a failure of imagination on my part. Why can’t we create something new?” On Tortoise’s takeover attempt, Davenport’s word of choice is “ambitious”, accompanied by a wry chuckle.

On the day that I visit Goalhanger HQ, he’s still a bit bleary-eyed from a trip to Los Angeles to – he claims – support The Rest Is History live tour. Sandbrook and Holland are still out there, and will end up playing the Wilshere Ebell Theatre, a 1,238-seat venue in central LA. Pastor – whom I last encountered sunning himself at the media market in Cannes – will head out to cheer them on.

It’s all getting quite glamorous. Down the hallway in this inauspicious co-working space, the sort of place where nebulous start-ups take their first steps in the business world, Goalhanger has turned three simple words (The Rest Is…) into a serious business. The question now is not how much more can that brand be squeezed – how many permutations are there in the formula – but what else can they do? We know, now, how the story starts. The rest remains to be seen.