Gary Lineker has acquired a payout of greater than £1m after Goalhanger Podcasts, the corporate behind The Relaxation Is Soccer and The Relaxation Is Historical past, greater than doubled its annual earnings.
The corporate reported a pre-tax revenue of £9.8m for final 12 months, up from £4.2m in 2024, based on its newest accounts filed at Corporations Home. It paid dividends of simply over £5m to shareholders, in contrast with £36,000 for 2024.
Income rose to £37.8m, from £15.4m the 12 months earlier than. Money within the enterprise stood at nearly £5m, broadly flat on the earlier 12 months.
Within the accounts, Goalhanger mentioned it had “exceeded its personal expectations in viewers attain, engagement and monetary efficiency, establishing a robust basis for future growth”.
Promoting accounts for about two thirds of Goalhanger’s income, however the firm has been rising its base of paying subscribers. That quantity greater than doubled final 12 months to 243,000, based on the accounts.
“The corporate’s partnerships with Spotify, YouTube and Apple have expanded our attain and we proceed to work carefully with platforms to know how we will meet our audiences and advertisers the place they’re,” it mentioned.
The corporate reported 667 million performs throughout audio and video final 12 months from its 13 exhibits.
The Relaxation Is Soccer, hosted by Lineker with Alan Shearer and Micah Richards, has greater than seven million month-to-month streams, making it one of the standard sports activities podcasts on this planet. The Relaxation Is Historical past, introduced by Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland, launched in 2020 and attracts tens of millions of downloads a month. The Relaxation Is Politics, hosted by Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart, launched in March 2022.
In December 2025, Goalhanger agreed a £14m take care of Netflix to stream a every day model of The Relaxation Is Soccer throughout this summer season’s World Cup.
The association has since been prolonged for 2 years to 2028, with new episodes operating on Mondays and Fridays since August throughout the Premier League and Champions League seasons. The World Cup sequence, which ran for 40 days, appeared in Netflix’s every day high 10 chart on daily basis of its run and reached primary within the UK.
The newest figures mark an additional step up from the corporate’s earlier filings. In March 2025, Enterprise Issues reported that Goalhanger had posted earnings of £1.4m, with money reserves then standing at £2.7m and workers numbers having risen from seven to 16. That report additionally famous that The Relaxation Is Soccer had recorded 19.6 million downloads throughout Euro 2024.
Corporations Home information present the corporate modified its accounting interval, submitting accounts for the 12 months to 31 Could 2024 after which for the interval to 31 December 2024.
Lineker, 65, arrange Goalhanger Podcasts in 2019 with Tony Pastor, the previous ITV controller, and Jack Davenport, the previous BBC government.
Mminority stake within the enterprise was bought to The Chernin Group, the American funding firm, firstly of this 12 months.
Lineker was the BBC’s highest-paid worker as presenter of Match of the Day till he left the programme in Could final 12 months.
Jamie Younger
Jamie Younger is Senior Reporter at Enterprise Issues, protecting SME finance, employment legislation and Westminster coverage since 2016. He has reported on each Finances and Autumn Assertion since 2018, helped make sense of the ‘covid period’ and the bounce-back mortgage scheme from launch by means of the fraud investigations, and broke the journal’s protection of the 2024 late-payment reforms. He joined Enterprise Issues straight from finishing his BA in Administration from Exeter College and is NCTJ-qualified. Attain him at jyoung@cbmeg.co.uk
