The agreement to run episodes of the football show, produced by Lineker’s Goalhanger business, on the BBC Sounds platform will end this week, The i Paper has learned.
The Rest Is Football features Lineker and fellow Match of the Day (MOTD) pundits Alan Shearer and Micah Richards discussing the weekend’s Premiership action in a relaxed format.
A renewal of the Rest Is Football licence would have taken the podcast through to next summer’s World Cup, which would have been Lineker’s BBC swansong.
Last week, The i Paper reported that the position of the BBC’s highest-paid presenter, earning £1.35m, had become untenable after the latest in a series of controversies.
The football podcast had irritated some BBC Sports executives because Lineker and his fellow BBC pundits made headlines by delivering more critical opinions than those offered during their TV appearances.
Since November, episodes – edited for any foul language – have aired on BBC Sounds two days after their debut on commercial podcast platforms and YouTube.
Gary Lineker outside his home in London after announcing he is leaving the BBC prematurely (PA)Episodes of the History series air on Sounds two months after their first broadcast. The BBC is unable to host The Rest Is Politics podcast, fronted by Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart, because of its impartiality rules.
The future of Match of the Day: Top 10, another Goalhanger production for BBC Sounds, which features Lineker, Shearer and Richards debating the greatest players and teams of the past, is also unsure.
Sources said this week’s Rest is Football episode would be the last new edition on Sounds. The future of the MOTD podcast is uncertain but any further episodes would not feature Lineker.
Lineker is already missing out on an estimated £800,000 after the BBC ripped up his deal to present FA Cup games and the World Cup next summer.
Deal ‘nice for Gary but not essential’
But radio industry experts said Lineker’s plans to expand Goalhanger, named Audio Brand of the Year at last week’s Arias industry awards, would not be greatly damaged by the social media post row, or the loss of the BBC deal.
Matt Deegan, founder of the British Podcast Awards, said: “People’s views on Lineker, pro or con, were baked into the Gary brand before the antisemitism row.”
Lineker said he would focus his attention on Goalhanger’s business expansion after leaving the BBC.
Following the US Presidential election, Goalhanger launched a US version of the Rest Is Politics, hosted by journalist Katty Kay and former Trump adviser Anthony Scaramucci.
Goalhanger podcast hosts Rory Stewart, Alastair Campbell, Katty Kay and Anthony Scaramucci (Photo: Freddie Pearson/Goalhanger)As a free agent, he could now be offered a World Cup role by a US or Middle East broadcaster.
A Goalhanger spokesperson said: “We’ll certainly be covering the World Cup, though no production plans have been finalised yet.”
Its 13 brands have now passed the landmark figure of one billion episodes streamed, with monthly audio and YouTube streams of more than 45 million.
The company’s most recent accounts filed at Companies House show its earnings rose from £590,000 in 2023 to £2.03m last year, indicating a £1.4m profit. Cash in the company’s bank account rose from £560,000 to £2.7m.
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