The Business of YouTube

A weekly strategic lens for senior leaders into how YouTube is reshaping the business of technology, sports, music, entertainment, and culture.

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To your favourite newsletter, The Business of YouTube, brought to you by Paola Marinone and Bengü Atamer, founders of BuzzMyVideos and previously at YouTube and Google. We are bringing our exclusive insights from 20 years of experience leading strategy at YouTube and Google.

Mining the Vault: The Rest Is Football and the Archive Goldmine

Micro-Rights and Macro-Growth

In a landmark move for digital creators, Gary Lineker’s Goalhanger has secured worldwide archive rights from the Premier League, making The Rest Is Football the first podcast to officially integrate historic match footage into its video format.

Here is a breakdown of how they landed this deal, the business engine behind Goalhanger, and what this signals for the future of sports media.

The Big Play: The Premier League Deal

On January 7, 2026, Goalhanger announced a licensing agreement that allows The Rest Is Football to use highlights from every Premier League game played between 1992 and May 2025.

• The Content: A new weekly series called “Premier League Greats: The Moments That Made Them.”

• The Format: Each Wednesday, the trio (Lineker, Shearer, Richards) analyzes five defining matches of a legendary player (e.g., Thierry Henry, David Beckham, Cristiano Ronaldo) while the original footage plays on screen.

• Platform Reach: The footage is exclusive to video platforms (YouTube and Spotify Video), while audio listeners receive the standard conversational format.

How they landed the rights:

1. Talent Leverage: Having the three most recognizable faces of UK football broadcasting, who already front the BBC’s Match of the Day; provided a "safe pair of hands" for the Premier League’s brand.

2. Proven "Clean" Distribution: Goalhanger proved they could handle rights-protected content through previous smaller deals for the FIFA Club World Cup and La Liga highlights.

3. The "Bridge" Strategy: The Premier League recognizes that younger audiences are migrating from linear TV to "personality-led" digital content. By licensing to Goalhanger, they re-monetize their archive for a demographic that might not watch a 90-minute rerun but will watch a 40-minute deep dive on YouTube.

Inside the Goalhanger Engine

Founded by Gary Lineker, Tony Pastor, and Jack Davenport, Goalhanger has evolved from a small documentary house into a "digital media network."

Key Business Stats (2025/2026)

• Scale: Over 70 million full-episode streams/views per month across 13+ shows.

• The "YouTube Effect": Video now accounts for a massive portion of their growth; they achieved 750 million full-length video views in 2025 alone.

• Revenue Mix: Majority ad-funded, but heavily diversified.

  • Subscribers: Over 250,000 paying members across the network (avg. £60/year), generating roughly £15 million in direct annual revenue.

  • B2B/Partnerships: They no longer sell "audio ads"; they sell 360-degree sponsorships covering audio, video, and social.

• The Netflix Deal: In late 2025, Netflix signed Goalhanger to produce a daily version of The Rest Is Football for the 2026 World Cup, cementing their move into mainstream "TV-style" broadcasting.

What This DEAL Actually Means for Sports Media

This Goalhanger deal is bringing “Nostalgia” back to mainstream. “Nostalgia” has always been a massive driver of audience on YouTube, but it was mainly led by creators. What this deal shows is that we’re entering a new era of opportunity as it became now mainstreams and many more will follow.

You probably have heard both of us saying “Archive is your Goldmine”. Well, you’ll be able to see the numbers as soon as they will go live with the content.

How can archive unlock new revenue streams for a right holder? Let’s deep dive on various opportunities:

1. Licensing: the traditional way, not much to be added here.

2. Curating: Creating new curated content on owned properties of the right holders: how about a channel about the historic games of a club? Like MTV 90s TV channel, but on YouTube. Livestreamed 24/7 or on demand.

3. Listicles/MashUps: Licensing to Podcast or Creators (or both) for online video creation and distribution for full matches or clips. Have you ever spent 10 minutes glued to a best Ronaldinho goals or Beckham or Cristiano Ronaldo? Well a few billion of people did. Just search for it YouTube to see the numbers (but careful you may be go down the rabbit hole too and spend 30 minutes on it, no less)

4. New Scalable Revenue Engine: Create a revenue share Creator Amplify Program with the Podcast/Creators (not one but many) that are inline with your values, strategic audiences, business objectives. It can be a great way to reach new audiences while generating new revenue. Full disclosure we can help with this one…chat to us if you want to explore further.

The Premier League has realized that a clip sitting in a vault is worth unrealised revenue, but that same clip in the hands of Gary Lineker and Micah Richards, repackaged for a YouTube audience, is a literal money printer and will reach new audiences.

Further Reading

• The Rest is Football lands Premier League archive rights in podcasting first 

• Gary Lineker’s The Rest is Football podcast goes to Netflix for 2026 World Cup 

Want to discuss how to shape your collaboration strategy, talk to us.

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