When the BBC confirmed the news this week that Gary Lineker was leaving Match of the Day at the end of this season, the presenter’s official reaction was limited to a terse 21-word statement that he was “delighted” at signing a new contract to cover the FA Cup and 2026 World Cup.
The former England striker was – unsurprisingly – more expansive about leaving the BBC’s flagship football programme after 25 years on his own podcast, the Rest is Football, on Thursday. “All things have to come to an end,” he mused. “I think the next contract, they’re looking to do Match of the Day slightly differently. So I think it makes sense for someone else to take the helm.”
After the breakup, it is widely agreed, Lineker himself will be fine. As a co-founder of the Goalhanger podcast empire – which includes the wildly successful The Rest is History and The Rest is Politics – the loss of his £1.3m salary from the BBC is unlikely to send him to the jobcentre come Monday.
But what about Match of the Day? In a fractured media landscape, where younger football fans post pirated clips of goals on social media seconds after they happen, and highlights can be watched on YouTube soon after the final whistle has blown, does anyone really need a Saturday night, dad-joke-heavy analysis of a relegation battle at the Molineux?
Yes, of course they do, is the BBC’s response. While the public mood music from the broadcaster this week has been muted (the split was mutual, the finances uncontested, the kids put first), behind the scenes a new plan for a revamped, digitally focused Match of the Day is forming. Top executives at the BBC are said to see “untapped potential” in the brand, after a new rights deal was signed last year in which it gained new digital rights for its online platforms from 2025, the Guardian understands.
While this is unlikely to put the BBC in hand-to-hand combat for rapid highlights with Sky Sports on social media channels, the deal is thought to include clips for the BBC website of all the goals scored and could also involve the brand “stretching out” across the weekend with more written content and analysis.
“The BBC isn’t worrying about Match of the Day being less relevant because of how people consume modern media, there is actually an opportunity here to exploit that change,” said a senior source at the broadcaster. “The show is still hugely popular and has been remarkably resilient, plus there are new digital opportunities – we’re not looking at retrenchment of the brand, but growth.”
Of course, they would say that. But it makes sense to strengthen a well-established sports brand, says Adam Dalrymple, of the media pulse-takers Enders Analysis. Its recent report showed TV sport viewing was relatively robust: while broadcast TV figures had plummeted by 26% since 2015, sports viewing was down just 3%. “Every media company is grappling with the digital transition,” Dalrymple says. “But Match of the Day has a head start because it already has a digital home.”
In the UK, the programme already punches above its weight: last season it attracted 247bn viewing hours across all platforms, half of the 501bn hours Sky got for its live coverage – but at a fraction of the cost. The BBC’s deal was “pretty cheap” compared with the vast sums handed over by Sky, says the media analyst Alex DeGroote. “And they’ve now also got a digital inventory stream to exploit. There’s a bit of downside risk when the new presenter takes over, but I think its future is relatively secure.”
Who the BBC will choose to ride out the hump is still under wraps, with the MOTD2 presenter Mark Chapman the frontrunner, and the Football Focus presenter Alex Scott and BBC sports allrounder Gabby Logan also in the mix. There have, of course, been prophecies of doom if the broadcaster “goes woke”, perhaps by hiring one of these over-qualified women for the job (one expert guest on TalkSport this week suggested a woman would be the wrong choice if she didn’t “know football”, as though MOTD executives were deep into negotiations with Tess Daly).
They can relax: the “woke” credentials of any candidate would not be taken into consideration, insisted one BBC source with knowledge of the show’s future direction. “Match of the Day will continue to be about football,” they deadpanned. “It will have people on it who know about football, talking about football. That’s the criteria.”
