Can The Rest Is Football Netflix deal succeed?

Former Manchester City defender Micah Richards asked Alan Shearer: “Isn’t he officially the best name?” he asks.

“He’s among the best of 2025, absolutely yes,” Shearer coyly replies before the pair and Gary Lineker break into giggles.

Three former players explain how Manchester City’s Erling Haaland scored his 100th Premier League goal in his 111th game this week, breaking Shearer’s long-standing record of 124 appearances.

It’s a typical moment of sarcasm on The Rest Is Football (TRIF), a podcast that dominates the market with a steady stream of episodes featuring the trio.

And it doesn’t end there. Goalhanger, the podcast company co-founded by Lineker and behind major brands such as The Rest Is Politics, The Rest is Entertainment and The Rest Is History, signed a deal with Netflix, announced this week. turn the football version into a daily TV show on the streaming service during next summer’s World CupIt takes place in North America.

This is new territory not only for this podcast giant, but for one man in particular, Lineker. Is there really a need for this new initiative and will it be successful?

Lineker was working at the BBC less than seven months ago. Presented Match of the Day (MOTD) for 26 years. Richards and Shearer often joined him as experts.

Even after Lineker said he would BBC One pulls out of hosting Saturday night football highlights show Following a series of controversies, the company was expected to be at the forefront of FA Cup and World Cup news in 2026.

Everything changed after that He shared a social media post about Zionism It featured an image of a mouse, which has historically been used as an antisemitic slur. In response, he said he would “never consciously republish anything anti-Semitic” but that “stepping back now seems like a responsible course of action.”

His post on Instagram Stories was met with anger by some sections of the Jewish community. The Campaign Against Antisemitism was among the groups pushing for the BBC to sever ties with Lineker, saying it was “untenable” for him to stay.

It looks like Lineker, 65, will now face his former employer.

The new Netflix deal will see the podcast abandon its usual format of having Lineker, Shearer and Richards take part in varying quality video calls from their own homes and instead head to a swanky New York studio.

Netflix says reporters will be beamed in from the England camp and fan zones, but there’s no corresponding word about Scotland in the streamer’s promotional material. Netflix is ​​not expected to have the rights to show matches live, unlike the BBC and ITV.

“This is a landmark deal” for both sports and video podcasting, according to Laura Fisher, audio and entertainment analyst at MIDiA Research.

While podcasts have traditionally been audio-only, video podcasts have been growing in popularity in recent years, and Netflix has been beefing up its portfolio to compete with YouTube. An announced to agree It will feature a variety of sports, pop culture and true crime video podcasts on its platform in October.

Analysts say this could open up the series and Lineker to a global audience, given Netflix’s large presence outside the UK. Netflix confirmed to BBC News that the series will be released not just in the UK but around the world.

Minal Modha of Ampere Analysis says her company’s research shows that football is now among the most popular sports in the United States, an area where American football, basketball and baseball are of great importance.

“For [Lineker] “I think it will be really beneficial for his career if he can solidify himself by riding the crest of this wave,” he says.

While Richards is already well-known in the US for his expertise on the CBS network, PP Foresight’s technology, media and telecom analyst Paolo Pescatore agrees that the move will “put Lineker firmly on the global stage.”

It is said that there is big money involved. The Sun reported that the new deal would dwarf the £1.35 million paid to Lineker by the BBC; that figure was at the top of the company’s publicly disclosed salary list when it was published this year. Although Ms Fisher didn’t want to speculate, she told us: “I think it’s safe to predict that Goalhanger will earn more than £1.35m.”

Goalhanger did not disclose how much the deal was worth when asked by BBC News. Accounts opened in February showed the company had retained profits of £2.03 million in the year to April 2024, up from around £590,000 the previous year, while cash in the bank rose from £560,000 to more than £2.7 million.

Former MP Rory Stewart, who presents The Rest Is Politics with Tony Blair’s former press secretary Alastair Campbell, said podcasts make money from advertising revenue, subscription fees and live show tickets. Times In February 2023.

It is also a lucrative business for homeowners. Stewart said both presenters received a third of the profits, adding: “That’s good money. Championship footballer money, I’d say. I’ve made more this month than I’ve ever made doing anything else in my life.”

But when viewers can sense there’s big money involved, as reported in the TRIF and Netflix deal, this may be troubling for some. “I think fans will be a little skeptical, I guess they always are. [when] There’s big money coming to the table,” warns Ms. Modha.

He adds that Lineker “wouldn’t want to alienate the fan base”, but said there was a possibility the podcast format could be changed to appeal more to a non-football audience, such as celebrity involvement.

Lineker helped found Goalhanger Films in 2014 to produce sports documentaries before moving into podcasts; His son Harry also works as a producer at the company.

Goalhanger, which operates from a modest co-working space in south London, won the UK Audio Brand of the Year award at the 2025 Audio and Radio Industry Awards. Their shows currently make up five of the top 10 most listened to podcasts in the UK on Spotify, and TRIF is claimed to reach seven million listeners a month.

During his final years at MOTD, Lineker was building his podcast empire; The first episode of TRIF was released in the summer of 2023 on platforms such as YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts. BBC Sounds previously co-hosted the podcast but it ended in may.

Lineker’s representatives declined to be interviewed for this article, but Lineker, who spoke to the Standard this week about his departure from the BBC, was positive about “not stepping on eggshells anymore”; a reference to whether he could express his personal views on social media while working for a public service broadcaster that prioritized impartiality.

“I’m getting on with my life. I was going to finish the World Cup on the BBC, so that’s the only thing,” he said. “And actually now I’m free to do whatever I want at the World Cup, which I think is great because we’ll be doing a podcast every day.”

TRIF is generally liked by listeners, though not everyone. Some reviews of Apple Podcasts complain that there are too many ads; one of them says that listening to the hosts read the commercials sounds like “nails being hammered on a chalkboard.”

“The rest is advertising,” another fan said in the comments on Spotify for the final episode. “Really,” replied another.

In reviews of sister podcast The Rest Is Entertainment, some listeners complain that journalist Marina Hyde speaks too quickly, while others say co-host Richard Osman “constantly” interrupts.

TIRF fan Callum Ritchie, 23, who plays for Abertay University’s football team, told BBC News he liked how Lineker “wasn’t afraid to speak his mind on certain issues”.

He listens to TRIF on Spotify but not on YouTube; He prefers to watch Gary Neville’s The Overlap or Simon Ferry and Paul Slane’s Open Goal podcast because the presenters on TRIF are often on video calls rather than in one studio together.

“I would be more interested if they were all filmed together,” he says.

So what does the Netflix deal really mean for fans and could there be plans for more?

The Observer’s football correspondent Rory Smith, who co-hosts the Libero football podcast, praises Lineker for his “forward-thinking, progressive and creative” approach to reaching a “different audience” through a new platform.

He says there will be a “real struggle” for viewers’ attention in such a saturated market once the World Cup begins. He notes that another former England footballer-turned-broadcaster, Neville, is producing similarly “innovative content” on The Overlap, and that such things “are going to happen a lot.”

“The stuff that Goalhanger produces might not be to everyone’s taste. There might be people who want really in-depth tactics, or they might want something a little less in-depth, less serious,” he says.

“But if it’s on Netflix, and that’s the platform of choice for a lot of people (even more so on YouTube), then the audience is there, too. So you’re going to get people to watch.”

On an episode of TRIF this week, Lineker asked his fellow hosts: What’s your favorite Netflix show? he asked. “Adolescence,” they all answered.

Richards also talked about Stranger Things; “There will be another series coming out soon,” he said. “It’s called Backstage Football,” Lineker said jokingly.

Many will be interested to see if they achieve success.

Additional reporting by Paul Glynn.