Gary Lineker is set to leave Match Of The Day after 25 years, it has been announced.
It came amid previous speculation about his future at the BBC.
The star, who has hosted the BBC Premier League highlights show since 1999, will step down at the end of the current football season.
Lineker said earlier this month he will “have to slow down at some point.”
Match Of The Day 2 host Mark Chapman was immediately installed as the bookies’ favourite to take over, with Alex Scott, Jason Mohammed, Kelly Sommers and Dion Dublin among the other frontrunners.
Lineker, who turns 64 at the end of November, is the highest-paid on-air talent at the BBC and is under contract until the end of the football season.
Lineker had previously laughed off the speculation, joking that the Match of the Day show in early October was his final one – then quickly adding: “before the international break”.
In March last year, Lineker was stood down from presenting the programme after a tweet comparing the British government's asylum policy with 1930s Germany sparked a row about BBC presenters expressing political views on social media.
Following the incident, a number of sports presenters boycotted the show in solidarity with Lineker, including pundits Ian Wright and Alan Shearer.
In August 2016 he made good on an earlier promise to present the show in his underpants after his boyhood club Leicester won the Premier League.
The 63-year-old also oversees a successful podcast business, which includes the popular The Rest Is Football, which he hosts alongside Match Of The Day pundits Alan Shearer and Micah Richards.
Lineker gave a wide-ranging interview to Esquire magazine talking about Goalhanger Podcasts, which was conducted in early August this year and was published in the Winter issue.
He was asked if he had contemplated ending his long association with the BBC to focus on his other venture full-time, possibly in the United States.
Lineker said: “I could do. Whether that will be the case I don’t know. At some point, I have to slow down somewhere… I’m getting old.”
He has also presented coverage of major sporting events like World Cups and European Championships and BBC Sports Personality of the Year events.
The 63-year-old is one of the BBC’s best-known presenters and is one of its highest-paid stars, earning more than £1.3m a year.
