Boss Of Gary Lineker’s Indie Says Making A U.S. Podcast Would Be “Holy Grail”

Max Goldbart
·2 min read

The boss of Gary Lineker’s podcast company has described making a show in the U.S. as “the holy grail.”

Tony Pastor, who launched Goalhanger Podcasts with the Match of the Day host and BBC exec Jack Davenport four years ago, said the company is pondering how to forge a podcast “directed at an American audience, because it is such a big and mature market.”

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“[The U.S. is] probably something like 25 times the size of the UK podcast market,” Pastor told journalists at a Broadcasting Press Guild event today alongside Lineker. “People in America drive a lot and there is a lot of podcast listening, so we would love to make something over there.”

Repped by WME, Goalhanger produces some of the biggest podcasts in the UK including the Rest is History, Rest is Politics and the Lineker-hosted Rest is Football.

The former has a solid listener base in the U.S., according to Pastor, but he said this has happened organically and through word of mouth rather than deliberate strategy.

“It’s a difficult thing as we know the UK, have lived here most of our lives and know what people enjoy,” he said. “To try and figure this out ‘natively’ in someone else’s market is a challenge.”

Pastor also helms a TV production company with Lineker, Goalhanger Films. The pair’s focus has pivoted to the audio mediuim of late and Lineker said he is a huge fan of the medium as the response to podcasts are “overwhelmingly positive,” compared with the “mixed” responses he has often garnered during his soccer and presenting career.

Lineker was grilled by journalists on his social media use due to several high-profile controversies over the past year, and he admitted he barely uses X (formerly Twitter) anymore.

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