Goalhanger Podcasts Ltd, the company behind The Rest Is History and The Rest Is Politics, filed its full accounts for 2025 at Companies House on Thursday 25 September. They show revenue of £37.8 million, an operating profit of £9.8 million and a membership base that grew from 110,000 to 243,000 paying members in twelve months.
Headline figures for Goalhanger have been reported before. What is new is the detail underneath them. This is the first audited, twelve-month set of accounts for Britain’s largest independent podcast company at its current size, and the most detailed public breakdown yet of where the money comes from. Two thirds of it is advertising, a quarter is membership, and more of it is earned in the United States than in the United Kingdom.
What the accounts confirm
The accounts filed at Companies House cover the calendar year 2025. Turnover was £37,837,719. The comparison period is only seven months, June to December 2024, because the company moved its year end, so the £15,464,274 shown for that period is, in the directors’ own words, “not directly comparable”. Operating profit was £9,824,734, profit before tax £9,849,107 and profit after tax £7,337,547. Cash at the year end stood at £4,955,770. Dividends of £5,034,500 were paid, against £36,000 in the previous period. The average headcount was 54, up from 34.
The revenue note is the part the industry has not seen before. Advertising brought in £25.3 million, or 67% of turnover. Membership brought in £9.4 million, or 25%. Live events added £1.5 million, commissions £0.8 million and other income £0.9 million. By market, £17.1 million (45%) came from the United States, £14.8 million (39%) from the UK, £4.2 million (11%) from the rest of Europe and £1.7 million from the rest of the world.
The strategic report records 667 million plays across audio and video on 13 shows, and three launches in the year: The Rest Is Science with Hannah Fry and Michael Stevens in November, The Rest Is Football: Daly Brightness with Rachel Daly and Millie Bright in April, and The Rest Is Classified with David McCloskey and Gordon Corera. Goalhanger also bought La Liga highlights and Premier League footage for The Rest Is Football, which it calls an industry first. More than 40,000 people attended its live events, including The Rest Is History at the Royal Albert Hall and at five venues in Australia.
What the directors said
The strategic report, signed by co-founder Jack Davenport on 30 June 2026, says the company “exceeded its own expectations in audience reach, engagement and financial performance”. On video it says Goalhanger “rose to the production challenge of introducing video to every one of its shows and now a significant portion of our audience watch our shows as well as listen”, and that video “has presented new opportunities to offer creative solutions to advertisers”.
The outlook section is more specific than the company usually is in public. “The 2026 budget is underpinned by our deal with Spotify and the exciting venture of bringing The Rest Is Football to Netflix every day during the FIFA World Cup from New York City,” it says. It adds that “over half of 2026 revenues are contracted with large international and established businesses”. Under foreign exchange risk it notes that the company’s “major revenue contract” and much of its membership income are collected in US dollars.
The notes also put a number on something the company would not disclose in January. In that month Goalhanger issued a new class of preference shares to “a third party investor” for £1,999,188 in cash, which diluted the founders without changing control. The accounts do not name the investor. Goalhanger announced The Chernin Group as its first outside investor on 28 January and said terms were undisclosed. Our reading is that the accounts now give the cash price of that stake, although the rights attached to the preference shares are not spelt out, so the figure need not be the whole value of the deal. Greg Bettinelli, a partner at the Chernin Group, and Gary Lineker joined the board after the year end. On 14 May 2026 the company also created three subsidiaries, Goalhanger Studios, Goalhanger Commercial and Goalhanger Ventures, and says most of its trading will move into the first two.
Where the money comes from, and what that means
The membership line deserves the closest reading. Goalhanger charges £6 a month or £60 a year and offers membership on eight of its shows, and it passed 250,000 members on 12 January this year. A business that collects £9.4 million directly from listeners is a different kind of business from one that sells advertising, because it does not depend on a platform’s ad market or on a platform’s terms. Our reading is that this is the number that gives Goalhanger its independence, and that it is why the company keeps launching shows with the membership scheme built in from day one.
The American figure is the one that will surprise people. The accounts do not say who pays the £17.1 million, but the strategic report’s reference to the Spotify deal and to a single major contract collected in dollars points to Spotify as the largest customer, which is also how Podnews read it when it reported the filing. That suggests a company which holds four of the top ten places in the UK’s 25 biggest podcasts and yet earns less than two fifths of its revenue at home. The likely consequence is that Goalhanger’s fortunes are now tied to a Swedish platform’s spending on video podcasts as much as to British advertisers.
The dividend is worth setting against the salaries. The £5.03 million paid out in 2025 compares with £36,000 the period before. City AM reported on 25 September that Lineker’s share came to more than £1 million. Directors’ remuneration in the accounts is £24,000, plus £270,000 of pension contributions, and total key management pay was £304,110. The founders are paid through their shares rather than their salaries, which is what the January investment was priced against.
There are two risks in the notes that the headlines did not carry. The company is in “a commercial dispute with a former advisor regarding the terms of a historical engagement”, has received formal notice of a claim, considers it “without merit” and has notified a possible counterclaim. No provision has been made. The second is currency: with almost half of revenue in dollars and most costs in sterling, the New York production of The Rest Is Football during the World Cup is described as a partial hedge rather than a full one.
What it means for British podcasting
The Sunday Times named Goalhanger Britain’s fastest-growing private company on 5 June, on sales of £37.9 million and three-year average growth of 321%. The audited figure is £37.8 million; the small difference is most likely rounding or a different definition of sales, and we could not reconcile it from the published material. Either way the accounts confirm a scale no other British independent podcast producer has published, and a profit margin of 26% on turnover.
What the structure says is as telling as the numbers. A Studios subsidiary, a Ventures subsidiary and, in August, a Head of IP Development hired from WME to turn the shows into television and film. Set beside the daily Netflix programme and the Chernin money, that points to a company organising itself as a rights owner rather than a podcast producer, with podcasts as the place the audience is built.
The next set of accounts is due by 30 September 2027 and will cover the Netflix year and the first full year of the Spotify contract. By then most of the trading will sit in the new subsidiaries, and the parent company’s accounts will say less on their own. Our reading is that the figure to watch in those accounts is not advertising but membership: if 243,000 becomes 300,000 while the Spotify and Netflix money holds, Goalhanger will have proved that a British podcast company can be paid three ways at once, by advertisers, by platforms and by its own listeners.
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