Goalhanger: UK podcasting must take more risks to build bigger media brands

UK podcasting needs to become less reliant on traditional commissioning models and more willing to back original ideas if it wants to build globally successful media brands, Goalhanger director of operations Chloe Straw has said.

Straw said parts of the industry had inherited a broadcaster mindset from radio, creating a more cautious culture than the creator economy emerging in the US.

Speaking at The Podcast Show* alongside executives from Amazon Music and Persephonica, Straw argued podcast companies should focus less on copying existing formats and more on building original intellectual property around subjects and communities they genuinely understand.

“I think podcasting came out of radio initially, and we were very used as an industry to being commissioned,” she said. “That’s almost made us, as an industry in the UK, quite risk averse.”

Straw said Goalhanger’s growth had come partly from backing ideas traditional commissioning systems may have rejected, pointing to the company’s early decision to launch “The Rest Is History” despite limited data suggesting a large audience for long-form history podcasts.

“The stats tell you you shouldn’t have done it,” she said, describing how the show emerged largely from co-founder Tony Pastor’s personal interest in the subject rather than conventional audience strategy.

Instead, she argued podcast companies looking to replicate Goalhanger’s success should focus less on chasing existing trends and more on taking creative risks.

“Don’t copy us – find your own path,” she said.

The comments came as podcast companies described rapidly growing advertiser appetite for the medium, particularly among larger traditional brands.

Straw said Goalhanger had recently worked with companies including Lloyds and Cancer Research UK after years in which podcast advertising was dominated by challenger brands and direct-response advertisers.

“One of the singular biggest things that has made that change is host-read ads,” she said. “You can have someone that’s so trusted by the audience say the name of your brand.”

Speaking on the same panel, Persephonica chief executive Dino Sofos said podcast companies increasingly had an advantage over broadcasters because they were approaching shows as “360 brands” spanning podcasts, social media, live events and video rather than standalone audio programmes.

Sofos pointed to the rapid growth of Dig It with Zoe Ball and Jo Whiley, which he said is now generating “well over six figures a month” in brand deals less than a year after launch.

“We’ve seen huge value by sort of creators as well as podcasters,” he said.

Bigger than audio

Several speakers suggested UK podcasting still lags behind the US when it comes to creator-style business building and self-publishing strategies.

Straw said Goalhanger’s growth had partly come from taking a more entrepreneurial approach to podcast distribution, including YouTube-first publishing strategies and designing formats with international audiences in mind.

Meanwhile, Sofos argued the industry should stop focusing too narrowly on US success metrics, noting that large underserved audiences still exist within Britain itself.

“When we launched Dig It, we had so many women who are 50, 60 years old saying this is the first podcast I listened to,” he said. “There are untapped audiences everywhere.”

*The UK Podcast Boom: Why the Industry Needs to Think Bigger, The Podcast Show London, 20-21 May 2026.