How hotshot host Lineker built his podcast empire

Gary Lineker's Goalhanger is the media company behind the hugely popular The Rest is... franchise.

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Is it a podcast? Is it a TV show? No, it’s Gary Lineker’s special hybrid World Cup video podcast-cum-TV show on Netflix! With news that Gary Lineker will be taking his podcast, The Rest Is Football, to New York for a daily show at next summer’s tournament, attention has once again turned to the Midas touch of the presenter-turned-king of the podosphere.

The show, co-hosted by former Premier League stars Alan Shearer and Micah Richards, is the latest announcement to come from Lineker's media outfit Goalhanger. Founded in 2019 as an offshoot of Goalhanger Films, the company was set up by Lineker and quickly brought us the breakthrough hit The Rest Is History, hosted by the historians Tom Holland and 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 lineup 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 and disruptive. "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? Entertainment? Or now even science?

While Holland and Sandbrook's show quickly shot up the charts, it wasn't until the launch of