Gary Lineker’s side hustle that could become more lucrative than £1,350,000 BBC job

Gary Lineker may be earning £1.35million at BBC, but his business on the side has the potential to be just as lucrative.

The 63-year-old regularly tops the list of the public corporation’s best-paid stars (the report doesn’t include those paid through its commercial arm BBC Studios or via independent production companies), with Gary taking the accolade for a sixth consecutive year in 2023.

His responsibilities for the broadcaster include presenting Match of the Day, and more recently, he’s been leading coverage of Euro 2024, as England progresses through the tournament.

When he’s not appearing on TV, Gary spends some of his time recording the hugely successful podcast, The Rest Is Football, with fellow former England players Alan Shearer and Micah Richards.

But that’s only part of the story, the podcast is part of Goalhanger, which houses a number of franchises on different subjects. These include The Rest Is Entertainment, hosted by House of Games’ Richard Osman and journalist Marina Hyde, The Rest Is Politics, The Rest Is Politics: US, The Rest Is History, and The Rest Is Money. It also produces other series outside of The Rest Is group including Wars That Shaped The World, and Disorder, which simplifies the complicated news stories.

Goalhangers bills itself as the UK’s largest independent podcast group and entertains millions of listeners every month.

The popularity of the podcasts has made Goalhanger a very profitable business, and Gary directly benefits as he founded the company alongside partners Tony Pastor and Jack Davenport.

Although, when they originally formed the company it was intended to just make sporting documentaries, it added the podcast division in 2022 and hasn’t looked back. The sister company, Goalhanger Films, now continues with the initial goal.

On the most recent filing for Goalhanger Podcasts, Tony and Jack are listed as directors, with Gary being a person with ‘significant control’.

Its micro company accounts filed in February for the financial year ending in May 2023, show capital and reserves were at £590,985, which was a steep increase from 2022 – £207,883. It’s enjoyed extreme growth of 184%, which puts our side hustle of selling old clothes on Vinted for £3 to shame.

If the company continues on the trajectory it could eventually become one of Gary’s main earners so despite that famous saying ‘don’t give up the day job’, he probably could.

Podcasting is undoubtedly a great sector to be in – with podcast listeners increasing every year (there are currently over 464 million podcast listeners worldwide), and accountancy firm PwC predicts advertising revenues from podcasts in the UK will hit £64m by 2025.

The presenters benefit from Golhanger’s financial prosperity too as they have a revenue-sharing business model in place, which means hosts of the main titles take a third of the podcast’s revenues, and Goalhanger also takes a third. Rory Stewart, who fronts The Rest is Politics alongside Alastair Campbell, described it as ‘Championship footballer money’.

Gary puts the success down to a combination of ingredients. ‘I think we started early, recognised that podcasting was going to be interesting, got a bit lucky and made some good choices . . . The business is performing staggeringly well,’ he summarised to The Financial Times.

When discussing his venture with The New Statesman, Gary described it as ‘a relatively new genre, so we don’t really know what the boundaries are in terms of growth’.

‘But it’s a very, very good business,’ he quickly added.

Gary was also asked in the 2022 interview if he’d consider leaving BBC to become a full-time podcaster and replied: ‘Maybe. Who knows? Life’s thrown many things at me.

‘But I’ve another, what, nearly three years left on this contract. I’ve got time to work out my retirement and get my bus pass. So I’ll be able to go on a double-decker, at the top, and listen to my podcast and sail into the sunset.’