Goalhanger Knows That “Reach Can Be Bought, Conviction Can’t”

Goalhanger bills itself to be ‘the home of curiosity’. The multi-platform media ecosystem (which first launched to produce sports documentaries) was co-founded in 2014 by sports broadcaster and former footballer Gary Lineker; Tony Pastor, former ITV controller of sport; and Jack Davenport, a former senior journalist at the BBC. Today the company produces shows like ‘The Rest Is History’, ‘The Rest Is Politics’, and ‘The Rest Is Football’, among others, covering the topics through an expert lens. It’s widely successful, receiving over 400 million downloads in 2024 with an average attention retention of 40 minutes – an unprecedented number in a landscape seemingly favouring short, quick, punchy content.

At the end of last year, a rebrand brought together all the past and continuous success under one banner; a move CMO Stephen Mai says is “the brand catching up” in the face of audiences already treating Goalhanger as a multiplatform media ecosystem. It follows a clear trend spotted over the past 18 months. “People don’t want to just listen anymore. They want to watch, follow, clip, share, binge, debate, and go deeper. And with Sam Oakley, our head of digital, leading the charge, that transformation has basically already happened inside Goalhanger,” he explains.

Latest data from the last 12 months shows that Goalhanger's network of 14 shows delivered more than 1.8 billion views and streams across video, audio and social, adding up to approximately750+ million full-episode views and streams and1.2+ billion social media views.

Goalhanger’s cultural presence and reach can’t be overstated – 70 million monthly streams and 150 million video views – while the average listening time (the aforementioned 40 minutes) is double the industry average. “We’re living in a world of micro-moments, feeds, swipes, six-second edits and yet people are choosing to spend almost an hour with us at a time. It’s a signal that audiences aren’t rejecting long-form content; they’re rejecting shallow content,” Stephen says. To him, data signals that depth is the new must-have and audiences want “clarity, intelligence, and voices they trust”, exactly what Goalhanger’s shows deliver.

We’ve heard over and over again that younger demographics have the attention span of a goldfish. Not according to Goalhanger’s data, with under 35s representing 40.9% of its audience. “Attention is being re-routed toward things that feel meaningful, intelligent, human or simply entertaining at the right depth. The idea that we have the attention span of goldfish is just bad analysis. What’s changed is the filtration system.”

Now the rebrand connects what Goalhanger already is to its audience to how it thinks about its offering, forming an ecosystem where engagement with one title naturally leads to “our newsletters, our live shows, our membership programme,” Stephen adds. In addition, the new brand identity “is crafted to signal intelligence, editorial confidence and consistency. It’s built to reinforce the trust that already exists and translate it into membership, deeper behaviours, and long-term affinity.”

“At the heart of it, the rebrand is doing one thing: turning the time people already give us into something bigger. More loyalty. More influence. More formats. More ways to be part of the Goalhanger universe.”

Know Your Audience

Data has also shown Stephen exactly what the audience wants. “People don’t want to just listen anymore. They want to watch, follow, clip, share, binge, debate, and go deeper,” he reveals, adding “77% of our audience consumes Goalhanger across multiple formats – audio, video, newsletters, shorts, YouTube, you name it. Half of them now watch episodes,” including on Spotify.

It’s a cultural shift that can be observed elsewhere too with audiences searching for “depth” though “they also want flexibility.” The rebrand takes this all into account to shift Goalhanger’s identity at a platform level. “It gives us the room to build franchises that can live across audio, video, live, and social,” Stephen says.

Central to this rebrand is a conviction borne out of a recent whitepaper finding stating “reach can be bought, conviction can’t”. It’s an interesting position to take when reach is so often used to be a measure of success. “In today's media economy, anyone can buy reach. You can pay for impressions, inflate a campaign with distribution, or hit a million views overnight if you have the budget. But that doesn’t mean people care. It doesn’t mean they believe you. And it definitely doesn’t mean they’ll change their behaviour because of you.” That’s not good enough for Goalhanger with Stephen stating that it’s going to lean on conviction instead. “Conviction is earned. It comes from trust, time spent, and the sense that a brand or creator actually means something to people.”

Naturally, that’s great news for Goalhanger’s advertisers. Stephen shares that “81% of listeners trust our hosts to recommend brands, and 68% take action after hearing an ad.” What do the numbers tell him? “You can’t buy that. You can’t manufacture it with media budget. That’s conviction.”

While trust in institutions is at an all time low, Stephen can see that people still “believe people” and as so many of Goalhanger's shows are anchored by personalities like Tom Holland, Rory Stewart, and Marina Hyde, the company has a wealth of trusted voices to draw upon. “Reach is easy. Anyone can rent attention. What Goalhanger has and what we’re doubling down on is attention people give us willingly,” he adds.

“We create advertising environments where people want to listen and watch.” It’s a commercial model that doesn’t interrupt listening or watching but rather places brands “inside relationships”, exposing them to an audience “that is educated, influential, and incredibly responsive because they trust the people speaking to them,” he says. The expansion into video and social only multiplies the opportunity “to leverage audience trust to tell stories, to land messages to drive action.” The diversity of Goalhanger's offering means advertisers have so much more than a 60-second audio read to choose from including visual explainers, documentary-style mini series, premium YouTube First content, and global talent cross-over, to name a few.

For People, Not The Algorithm

Embedded in the diversity of content is a complementary stance against ‘algorithmic sameness’ and a monoculture of media “we’ve all been living in for the last decade”, according to Stephen, which has produced formulaic content, visually and in tone. It’s designed for the algorithm, not the end user. Goalhanger is leaning on ‘timeless editorial craft’ by investing in an original, human tone, the kind of topics it covers across its shows, and the user experience too. Hosts’ personalities are actively cultivated and the tone reflected in other content, tone that has “edges, personality, rhythm; it doesn’t flatten everything to fit the For You Page,” Stephen explains. 
Building for longevity and substance is another feature, like the recent launches of ‘The Rest Is Science’, a Beatles special with Conan O’Brien, and a three-part Walt Disney series with Bob Iger. “They’re built to matter for years.” In short, differentiation, not performance, is used to drive success.

Stephen – who has previously worked at Vice, LADbible, and Boiler Room – says there's a common theme across his work, subversive innovation, which forms the basis of his strategic outlook. “Not disruption for the sake of it but disruption with intention. Challenging norms in a way that feels fresh, necessary, and culturally fluent.”

For head of digital and social Sam Oakley, the rebrand and the new mission add up to a clear goal and he calls the approach “simple” saying “We make things people want to consume. Platforms are trying to decipher what is good content and who to serve it to, so our job is just have strong formats, great talent and slightly tinker to each platform. It’s the same reason we’re investing in multi-part series, cultural specials, and big, ambitious ideas. People commit when they feel you respect their time.”

Moving away from podcasting, however successful, and to being a cultural ecosystem opens a lot of doors, editorially and commercially. “When you’re seen as a cultural media brand, you can build worlds that advertisers can participate in,” Stephen says. The future looks ripe for experimentation and realisation of even bigger ambitions like co-creating new shows, series, and specials with brands, “rather than just placing them inside existing ones. The creative canvas gets bigger, not narrower” while the masterbrand gives all decisions cohesion.

Crucially, the brand is, in Stephen's words “moving from being defined by the shows we make to being defined by the impact we have. And that opens up a completely new chapter for us creatively, commercially, and culturally.

“Goalhanger’s success has always come from being unapologetically human: real voices, real conversation, real curiosity. In a media world that’s increasingly automated and algorithmic, humanity is becoming a superpower. So if there’s one thing to watch from us over the next year, it’s how we continue to build a media eco-system that feels alive.”