Latest news with #Ant & Dec
Yahoo
08-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
How much does Gary Lineker earn? Presenter to host new ITV gameshow
The former Match of the Day presenter will host ITV's The Box. Gary Lineker will host a new game show on ITV following his departure from the BBC, the broadcaster has confirmed. Lineker will host The Box on ITV, which will see celebrity contestants "transported to unknown locations, before being released to face whatever game awaits on the other side of the door." The former Match of the Day presenter will host the show, which was originally launched on TV2 in Norway earlier this year. "The contestants will have to quickly and masterfully work out how each game works, whilst also trying to get ahead of the competition to take control," Lineker said. "It's going to be unpredictable and thrilling to watch." Lineker had been rumoured as the new host of the show for some time, after The Sun originally reported ITV bosses were trying to sign him. The Sun claimed ITV had hoped Lineker's presence would fill the gap left by Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway, which ended its successful run in 2024. The 64-year-old left the BBC in May – earlier than had been planned – following a post about Zionism which featured a depiction of a rat, historically an antisemitic insult, which he apologised for. Lineker was the BBC's highest-paid broadcaster for nearly a decade, while his podcast empire, which includes The Rest Is Football, forms a key part of his business ventures away from his television presenting duties, as Yahoo News UK explains. What businesses does Gary Lineker own? Lineker is the owner of a podcasting empire, in the form of Goalhanger Podcasts, responsible for shows such as The Rest Is History, The Rest Is Politics, The Rest Is Entertainment and The Rest Is Football, which Lineker himself presents with BBC pundits Alan Shearer and Micah Richards. Goalhanger was founded seven years ago by Lineker and former TV and radio executives Tony Pastor and Jack Davenport, and says its 12 podcasts collectively have more than 40 million downloads a month. The most popular is The Rest Is History, fronted by historians and authors Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook, which regularly tops various UK podcast charts on different providers and has a live touring show. Its popularity is such that it has become an international success and has a large audience in the US. Not far behind it is The Rest Is Politics, presented by former Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell and ex-Tory minister Rory Stewart, which has more than two million listens each week and was recently broadcast live to about 13,000 people at London's O2 Arena. The Rest Is Football, hosted by Lineker, was a huge success during the men's 2024 Euros tournament, podcasting daily and amassing almost 20 million downloads, but caused controversy with one episode in which Lineker described an England performance as "s**t". Currently available on services such as Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Audible and Amazon Music, The Rest Is Football moved from the BBC to British internet sports streaming platform DAZN following Lineker's BBC exit. Lineker also has his own production company, Goalhanger Films, established over 10 years ago, which has produced programmes on ex-footballer Wayne Rooney and boxer Anthony Joshua, and is working on a show for Amazon about former tennis star Serena Williams. Lineker has also been an angel investor for a number of start-ups, backing insurance firms Neos and Ingenie in the past. Lineker also remains an ambassador for Walkers' crisps, having signed a three-year contract extension in 2023 – his first advert appearance for the snack was broadcast in 1995. How much money does Lineker make? Lineker has a reported net worth of about £30m, with the BBC saying in its latest annual report in July that he earned between £1,350,000 and £1,354,999 a year – the same as he made in 2024. He agreed to a pay cut in 2020 as part of a five-year contract, having previously been paid about £1.75m a year. The Times reported in June 2024 that he made more than £125,000 in the first two weeks of last year's Euros from his The Rest Is Football podcast. The newspaper said Goalhanger's accounts, for the 12 months to May 2023, showed its capital and reserves had almost trebled to £591,000, but that this figure was likely to be substantially surpassed when its total is calculated for the year that followed. The previous three-year contract he signed with Walkers Crisps, in 2020, was worth £1.2m. What do Gary Lineker's sons do for a living? Lineker has four sons with his first wife, Michelle Cockayne, who he married in 1986. His eldest son, George, is the co-founder of telecoms start-up Your Business Number, which lets customers pay for a virtual phone number used to contact clients through WhatsApp business, without the need for an extra phone line. In 2022, it was valued at £5.5m. Lineker's second oldest son, Harry, works as a producer at his father's production company, Goalhanger Films. Lineker's other sons, Tobias and Angus, are a DJ and business development manager respectively.
Telegraph
07-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
ITV is going to regret hiring Gary Lineker
ITV is said to be 'really excited' about snapping up Gary Lineker to present its new game show, The Box, set to air next year. The channel presumably sees the former Match Of The Day host as a potential saviour of the Saturday night slot, once the most important and coveted moment on terrestrial TV's weekly calendar, but now struggling to retain any relevance in the era of the big streaming services. Given Lineker's seemingly insatiable need to make controversial political pronouncements, it's a strategy that looks more likely to give ITV nightmares than a new frontman in the mould of Bruce Forsyth. It's reported that ITV has been 'sniffing around' the 64-year-old Lineker for some time. The channel is facing a potentially existential problem as it seeks a replacement for Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway, which came to an end last year. It had been a game show that – uniquely in the modern era – recaptured the pure light-entertainment magic of the 1970s to the 1990s, when families across the country would routinely sit down together to watch their favourite programmes, providing huge viewing figures and advertising revenues to match. Given that desperate need, replacing two universally loved and accomplished entertainers such as Ant McPartlin and Declan Donnelly with a football presenter with a habit for putting his foot in it is a dangerous gamble. Given Lineker was paid a yearly salary of £1.35m by the BBC, recruiting Lineker is likely to be an expensive risk as well as a reputational one. What ITV has on its hands is less 'Mr Saturday Night' and more a deeply divisive figure who is as likely to have viewers turning off as tuning in. So ITV's celebrations might be short-lived, especially if it is unable to police his frequent public interventions on social media. BBC rules dictate that staff must uphold the corporation's impartiality on personal social accounts. The 2021 ITV guidelines state: 'Online communications, especially relating to news, political, religious and industry issues, should be reported with due accuracy and presented with due impartiality.' So will it do what the BBC seemingly never could and insist he finally shuts up? Perhaps new colleagues might demand the channel's chiefs do so, having seen the tension his behaviour caused among the rank-and-file at the BBC. As long ago as 2018, Lineker was criticised by the BBC's cricket correspondent Jonathan Agnew for his use of social media. 'Please keep your political views, whatever they are and whatever the subject, to yourself,' said Agnew. 'I'd be sacked if I followed your example.' Lineker has long preached a kind of morally lofty and pseudo-neutral liberalism – 'Linekerism' if you will – but this has never really stood up to scrutiny. His assertion that he is politically neutral has been continually undermined, such as when he described the attacks on Israel by Hamas on October 7 2023 as 'that Hamas thing' and said of the ensuing war in Gaza, 'I can't think of anything that I've seen worse in my lifetime '. This despite his lifetime encompassing the Vietnam War, the Yugoslavian Civil War, the Rwandan genocide, the Iraq War and the rise of Isis to name just a few. In 2023, Lineker criticised the government's policy of stopping migrants in the English Channel as 'an immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s'. Even a spokesperson for Sir Keir Starmer said comparisons with 1930s Germany 'aren't always the best way' to make an argument. There is no huge influx. We take far fewer refugees than other major European countries. This is just an immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s, and I'm out of order? — Gary Lineker (@GaryLineker) March 7, 2023 The BBC temporarily suspended Lineker but he returned a week later after its director-general, Tim Davie, confirmed the presenter had agreed to abide by the corporation's guidelines. But in May this year it was announced Lineker would leave the BBC at the end of the Premier League season following further controversy after he shared a pro-Palestine video on his Instagram account. The clip, produced by the campaign group Palestine Lobby, featured an anti-Semitic rat emoji. Lineker later apologised, pleading ignorance and saying he stands 'against all forms of racism', which just happens to be a favourite expression of the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. But he has since double backed (as any proud Linekerist would). When asked last week if his exit from the BBC was 'of his own volition, or a case of quit or be quitted', he replied, 'the latter'. Lineker has also stated he believes his apology should have been enough to keep his job on Match Of The Day. Instead, he will now be preparing for his new role as host of The Box, a Norwegian concept that sees a dozen celebrities complete a series of challenges whilst being stuck in containers. The show is said to be a mix of I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! and SAS: Who Dares Wins. But executives at ITV may soon be wishing they themselves were trapped in a tunnel filled with mealworms or being dropped out of a helicopter into a freezing ocean rather than have to police the Gospel of Gary unshackled by the constrictions of the licence fee.
