Gary Lineker to host new ITV game show after BBC exit
The former England striker will return to screens fronting a game show called The Box.
It comes after he was forced to step back from presenting Match of the Day in May for sharing a pro-Palestinian video on Instagram which featured a rat emoji, considered to be an anti-Semitic slur against Jewish people.
He took the post down and apologised, but last week said he stepped down after BBC bosses told him it was 'a case of quit or be quitted'.
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The Box is based on a Norwegian programme of the same name, which sees 12 celebrities forced to undergo daring challenges while stuck inside a box.
The programme has been described as a cross between I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here and SAS Who Dares Wins.
ITV hope it will be a replacement to Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway.
A source told The Sun, which first reported on Lineker's TV return: 'The Box is massive in Norway, and the rights were quickly sold to Denmark and now the UK.
'ITV are really excited about it - and believe they have finally found a worthy successor to Saturday Night Takeaway.
'They have long been sniffing around Gary and just needed to find the right format for him.
'They're confident they've found that now, and the BBC's loss is their gain.'
A TV insider told the newspaper: 'The scheduling hasn't yet been confirmed but filming takes place in the autumn, and the series is due to air early spring.
'It looks likely to get a Saturday night slot though, but obviously it's all still to play for.'
Lineker began presenting Match of the Day in 1999 and was the BBC's highest paid presenter for the past eight years.
He lost out on an estimated £800,000 in BBC pay as a result of his early exit from the broadcaster.
Before the anti-Semitism row erupted, he had planned to quit Match of the Day at the end of the football season that has just ended before quitting the broadcaster altogether following next year's World Cup in North America.
The anti-Semitism row came two years after Lineker was asked to step back from the BBC for comparing the previous government's immigration policy to Nazism.
His suspension led his co-presenters Ian Wright and Alan Shearer to also step back from the programme before Lineker was reinstated following talks with Tim Davie, the BBC director general.
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