Goalhanger Takes Ad Sales In-House as Football Media Business Scales

One of the fastest-growing businesses connected to European football is not a club, league or broadcaster.

It is a media company built around personalities, intellectual property and direct audience relationships.

Goalhanger, the London-based business behind The Rest Is Football, will take its advertising sales operation fully in-house from January 2027 as it seeks greater control over how brands buy access to its audiences.

The change means advertisers will be able to work directly with Goalhanger across audio, video, social media, newsletters, live events, branded editorial and custom content rather than treating podcast advertising as a standalone product.

Goalhanger wants to own the commercial relationship

Bringing advertising sales in-house is fundamentally about control.

Media businesses traditionally rely on outside agencies, podcast networks or advertising platforms to sell some of their inventory. That can deliver scale, but it also places an intermediary between the media owner and the advertiser.

Goalhanger has now reached a size where that arrangement is becoming less attractive.

Its commercial team will be able to negotiate directly with brands and agencies, package inventory across multiple channels and develop longer-term partnerships around specific shows and presenters.

For The Rest Is Football, that creates a significantly broader product than conventional podcast advertising.

The Rest Is Football has moved beyond podcasting

The Rest Is Football, fronted by Gary Lineker, Alan Shearer and Micah Richards, is perhaps the clearest example of that strategy inside Goalhanger's portfolio.

The programme expanded into a daily Netflix show during the 2026 FIFA World Cup, giving Goalhanger distribution through one of the world's largest entertainment platforms while retaining the identity of its existing football property.

That relationship has since been extended into domestic football, turning The Rest Is Football into a hybrid product spanning traditional podcast platforms, video, streaming television and social media.

The important distinction is that Goalhanger is not simply licensing presenters to a broadcaster. It owns the underlying media brand.

That gives the company the ability to monetise the same intellectual property through multiple channels.

A £38m media company built around talent

The economics behind the decision are increasingly substantial.

Goalhanger generated approximately £37.9 million of sales in 2025 and has been ranked among Britain's fastest-growing private companies after several years of rapid expansion.

Recent accounts also showed pre-tax profit approaching £10 million, while the company's paid membership base has climbed above 240,000.

Advertising remains a major part of the business, which makes ownership of the advertiser relationship particularly valuable.

Instead of receiving a share of revenue generated by third-party sales representation, Goalhanger can increasingly control pricing, packaging, customer relationships and campaign execution itself.

Football audiences are becoming independent media assets

The development reflects a wider change in football media.

Historically, former players and football personalities generally needed a television or radio network to aggregate an audience around them. The broadcaster controlled distribution, advertising inventory and most of the economics.

Digital distribution has weakened that dependency.

Personalities with large audiences can now build their own media businesses, distribute content across several platforms and negotiate directly with sponsors.

The result is a new competitive layer in football broadcasting. Clubs, leagues and established television networks are no longer competing only with each other for attention. They are also competing with personality-led media brands that can produce football programming at a fraction of the infrastructure required by a traditional broadcaster.

The Netflix relationship is particularly important

Goalhanger's Netflix expansion shows how the dividing line between creator media and conventional broadcasting is becoming increasingly difficult to define.

A football podcast can now become a streaming programme without abandoning its original audio distribution.

That allows Goalhanger to accumulate audiences rather than replacing one distribution channel with another.

Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube and other platforms remain part of the distribution network while Netflix adds another layer of reach and commercial credibility.

From an advertiser's perspective, that means a partnership can potentially follow the same football property across several different media environments.

Live events add another revenue stream

Goalhanger is also demonstrating that digital audiences can be converted into physical ticket sales.

Its inaugural Rest Is Fest event at London's Southbank Centre sold approximately 26,000 tickets across 22 shows in September.

That creates another commercially valuable asset around the company's programming: live audience access.

Sponsors can consequently be offered packages covering digital advertising, presenter integrations, streaming content and physical events under a single commercial relationship.

What happens next

Goalhanger plans to brief agencies and advertisers on its 2027 commercial proposition during October, including an upfronts-style presentation for media buyers and brands.

That language itself is significant.

Upfront presentations have historically been associated with large television networks selling advertising around future programming schedules. A podcast company adopting the same approach illustrates how quickly independent digital publishers are moving into territory once dominated by broadcasters.

The Rest Is Football is therefore useful to watch not only because of its audience or presenters, but because of the business model developing behind it.

Football media is becoming less dependent on owning broadcast rights and more capable of monetising attention directly.

Goalhanger's decision to take advertising sales in-house is another step in that direction.