RE: Sunday Times1 Jun 2025 18:16
Gary Lineker, the BBCâs recently red-carded football presenter, was notable by his absence at last monthâs Podcast Show in north London. He had been lined up as a star speaker, so his presence loomed large.
Goalhanger, the start-up production business that he co-founded with friends Tony Pastor and Jack Davenport, has established itself as a dominant force in the podcast sector, at the expense of mainstream broadcasters such as, awkwardly, the BBC.
Now Goalhanger, which makes shows including The Rest is History and The Rest is Politics, has its sights set not just on competing with broadcasters on your headphones â but on living-room television sets, via YouTube and Spotify.
According to Davenport, Goalhangerâs podcasts are âconsumedâ â industry jargon for viewed or heard â up to 65 million times a month. A quarter of this figure is accounted for by YouTube and, in the case of The Rest is History, âsomething like 40 per cent of the [YouTube] viewing is done on the full-screen TVâ.
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Davenport said: âThe implication of that number for the media industry is just massive. This is one of the things Iâm talking about a lot ⌠This is not like some weird, small part of the media. This is, like, the future of mass-media consumption. This is the future of TV.â
Race to record podcast videos for millions of viewers
Goalhanger is not alone. Most big podcasts, including The Royals from the stable of The Times, now record videos to serve audiences who want to watch screens and observe the expressions and mannerisms of their programmesâ hosts and interviewees.
And it is in this context that Spotify, led by the Swedish billionaire Daniel Ek, is attempting to transform itself into a home not just for music and podcasts, but for music videos and visual podcast recordings.
Roman WasenmĂźller, Spotifyâs 32-year-old global head of podcasts, came to last monthâs Podcast Show armed with some impressive stats â among them his estimate that, in the Spotify office, peers listen to their podcasts at an average speed of about 1.3 times normal.
WasenmĂźller claimed: âOver the past year, video consumption [on Spotify] has grown 95 per cent in the UK. Eight out of the top ten shows [include] video.â
You might assume that Spotifyâs video-watching community skews young. Wrong. âTo be quite transparent, we expected video to maybe be a growth driver for younger audiences,â WasenmĂźller said. âItâs not the case. Adopters are pretty much the same across age groups, which is cool to see.â He added that young people tended to watch podcasts on their phones, while older people watched them on TV.
As if to emphasise the growing significance of Spotify in the TV sector, Channel 4 last month struck a deal under which it will begin broadcasting youth-focused shows â Minor Issues, Hear Me Out and Secret Sauce â on Spotify to find new audiences.