With 70 million full-episode streams per month, averaging 40 minutes per show, Goalhanger is now among the biggest publishers in the UK.
Co-founder Jack Davenport told Press Gazette it now has some 200,000 paying subscribers for its 13 brands including: The Rest Is History, The Rest Is Politics and the World War Two history podcast that got things started – We Have Ways of Making You Talk.
The addition of video to all Goalhanger’s podcasts over the last year has led to an explosion in both audience and revenue for the company which now employs some 55 staff.
Davenport also revealed that the biggest individual audience segment for The Rest Is History is now Youtube viewers tuning in on a full-size TV. Goalhanger’s own research suggests 50% of its audience now prefers to view, rather than listen to, its various shows.
Davenport spoke to Press Gazette in the latest edition of our Future of Media Explained podcast alongside Connie Krarup of Q5 Partners. The edition was sponsored by Q5.
Press Gazette: Are you really a video company now (rather than a podcaster)?
Davenport: “Initially we were very audio focused, and that’s because we had no investment when we started. We were a very low cost model. Essentially, it was myself, it was Tony [Pastor] and one producer in the office coming up with ideas for shows and making them at very low cost…
“In 2025 Youtube is the biggest growth platform for Goalhanger. It’s the biggest growth platform for podcasting as a whole.
“And we almost move away now from using the word podcast to describe our shows, because we think that that still conjures audio in a lot of people’s heads, whereas all our shows now that we make are multimedia. You can listen on audio, but you can watch them. They’re on Youtube and Spotify on video and they’re across social media.”
What impact has Youtube expansion had on the age of your audience?
“Across Goalhanger, the average age of our audience is mid 30s.
“On Youtube, for example, The Rest is History has been finding a younger audience that have been engaging with that show…
“On The Rest Is Politics US we’ve invested a lot in the Youtube version. Whereas the audio audience [demographic] kind of mirrors the UK audience in the US, the Youtube audience is more American. Americans who are over 50, specifically over index for that show on Youtube in America.
“Youtube is such a massive platform now that a wide cross section of society demographically consumes content there and is looking for what people used to get from traditional media.”
What investment has been involved in moving from audio-only to video production?
“Adding video adds two to three times as many people and subsequently cost. On the recent World War One series of The Rest is History, there would have been more than a dozen people across the business working on those shows, and that’s everything from video editing, social production, creating the social assets.
“It would have been a lot more difficult for Goalhanger to start today, given how important video is now than it was.
“I don’t think that you could launch something significant with that super low cost model now. The barriers to entry are now higher, but it’s a lot cheaper than producing an hour of something that would go on on the BBC, and it’s a hell of a lot cheaper than producing, you know, an episode of The Crown.”
How are your presenters incentivised?
“We very much build shows around those personalities, because ultimately, that’s the bond that people form with an individual show…
“We want the hosts to be as bought in as possible on the success of the show. We view that as key to the models. So of course, they’re heavily incentivised in the shows working commercially.
“We don’t believe in people turning up for a fee, we need people to care about the success of the show and the brand overall, and feel bought into it. And so our deals, broadly speaking, reflect that and it’s been a massively powerful thing for our business and for our business model.”
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