Football ‘has eaten almost every sport’ due to digital dominance, says podcast chief
Gary Neville presents with NBC Sport at Anfield (Photo by Carl Recine/Getty Images)
Football “has eaten almost every sport worldwide” thanks to its dominance of TV and digital markets, according to the head of the leading podcast production company Goalhanger.
Tony Pastor, CEO of the studio behind the Rest is Football among other podcasts, said that broadcasters were struggling to get value for money for sports rights and that competitions should “embrace fragmentation” to reach audiences where they are.
“Football’s already eaten almost every sport worldwide,” Pastor said. “With the possible exception of a bit of boxing and, obviously, American sport separately, football’s eaten all the other sports. Rugby and cricket are like a pale shadow of themselves. What we need to make sure is that these very high-quality leagues are seen by people. They’ve got to make sure they’ve got the audiences that are going to watch them in the future.”
Speaking on a panel at the Financial Times Business of Football Summit, Pastor did not pull his punches. Sitting alongside the international media rights director for Serie A, Anna Guarnerio, Pastor said the Italian top flight was an example of competition losing its audience.
“When I grew up, Serie A was the best league in the world and I never missed it,” Pastor said. “Channel 4 did an amazing job and I never missed it. It went through a long spell of disappearing. Now, my kids don’t watch it. It’s disappeared. We need to bring Serie A back again. Serie A has a responsibility to its own content to make sure the audiences of the future can find it. Otherwise, these things disappear and die.”
Pastor, a former controller of sport at ITV, formed Goalhanger with Gary Lineker and fellow journalist Jack Davenport in 2018. The company says it gets more than 75 million downloads of its podcasts each month. Pastor says the company has been able “to make a lot of noise” without acquiring rights, though the Rest Is Football has access to La Liga highlights and has secured a deal with Netflix for a World Cup show this summer.
“I think one of the challenges around TV rights is that we were able to capture a lot of attention at Euro 2024 and be very noisy without any rights,” Pastor said. “So when I look around the world I think there’s fragmentation and capturing value as the rights holder is becoming increasingly challenging.
“The NFL has the biggest, most valuable sports rights in the world. What’s the thing that most people are aware of? It’s actually New Heights podcast with the Kelce brothers and it has no rights. So we’re in a really interesting new landscape where it’s very challenging for rights holders to capture [the audience] all in one place. Now you have to embrace this idea of fragmentation, where different audiences are in different places.”
Guardian
