Yahoo Sport 
Gary Lineker's £30m fortune could rocket after BBC Match of the Day decision confirmed
Gary Lineker is to step down as host of Match of the Day at the end of this season, and in doing so will wave goodbye to a chunk of his £1.35m annual salary. The 63-year-old former England international has helmed the show since 1999 when he took over from Des Lynam, during which time he rose to become the BBC’s highest-paid star.
While leaving his role as host of Match of the Day, Lineker will continue to helm the broadcaster’s FA Cup coverage, as well as the coverage of the next FIFA World Cup, which is to be held in the United States in 2026. But while leaving his role as host of the famous Premier League highlights show will cause a dent in his earning power from the nation’s broadcaster, the former Barcelona striker won’t be too hard up, and is likely to pour more energy into growing his Goalhanger Productions company that has become the UK’s largest independent podcast producer in recent years.
Back in 2014, Lineker, alongside Tony Pastor and Jack Davenport, founded Goalhanger, with Lineker’s ‘The Rest Is Football’ show the flagship podcast. Since then, it has gone on to add shows such as The Rest Is History, The Rest Is Politics, and The Rest Is Entertainment, featuring talent such as Richard Osman, Marina Hyde, and Alistair Campbell.
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It has ridden the podcast wave over the last decade, with the company claiming its episodes have been downloaded more than 400m times in 2024. As per the most recent micro accounts, which don’t offer a comprehensive breakdown of revenue, profit and loss, and costs, Goalhanger had almost £591,000 in capital and reserves, but that doesn’t tell the whole story.
The company operates on a revenue-sharing model for its hosts, which means hosts of the main titles take a third of the podcast’s revenues, and Goalhanger also takes a third. One of its main hosts, Rory Stewart, had previously described it as ‘Championship footballer money’.
In an interview with the New Statesman back in 2022, Pastor described podcasting as going through a “Netflix, Amazon Prime period of growth”. Lineker, in the same interview, said: “It’s 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.”
With some more time on his hands from the end of this season, he may well be primed to push the boundaries of growth further to increase Goalhanger’s profitability and his own personal fortune, which is said to stand at around £30m.
