Gary Lineker makes ‘absurd’ BBC and ITV comment after joining rival for World Cup | Football | Sport
Gary Lineker has admitted he used to compare BBC and ITV’s viewing figures at international tournaments during his time as a presenter. Lineker spent over 20 years at the BBC and was their lead anchor for World Cups and European Championships.
That all changed last year when he left the broadcaster, with the 2026 World Cup set to be the first since 1998 that Lineker hasn’t covered for the BBC. His face and voice became synonymous with the Beeb’s coverage, and Lineker has admitted he took it to heart when competitors ITV had better ratings.
Speaking in a tell-all interview with The Athletic, Lineker said: “It’s like the BBC and ITV at the World Cup. I used to care about who got the biggest figures. The BBC always wins the head-to-head, but you could see who was getting the bigger audiences for the exclusive matches during the tournament.
“But at the last few tournaments, I just thought that was absurd. It’s not sport. You just try to do a really good TV show and some people might prefer the other side and it doesn’t matter. Some people might prefer Stick to Football to The Rest is Football, fine. But a lot of people prefer us, which is also great. You can do both.”
Since leaving the broadcaster, Lineker has turned into somewhat of a media mogul and will be heading to the World Cup, not with the BBC as was previously planned, but with Netflix instead. That’s because Lineker’s podcast, The Rest is Football, signed a £14million deal to stream daily episodes during the World Cup from a studio overlooking New York’s Times Square.
On the deal, he said: “It’s great and it will help us grow, hopefully in America, as well. We’re growing so quickly anyway — it’s an amazing business. We’re just blagging it, we don’t know what we’re doing but somehow it’s working.”
Lineker was quizzed on his competitors in the podcast space, most notably Stick to Football, which features the likes of Gary Neville, Jamie Carragher and Ian Wright. But the ex-England international was quick to distance himself from that type of show.
He explained: “It will be nothing like the aforementioned show… ours is a bit more than just Man United”, before adding “joke”.
“Podcast-wise, no,” says Lineker. “We’re so far ahead in terms of the football. Theirs is a YouTube show and it does really well on YouTube — it’s not really a podcast. I saw Jamie (Carragher) last week and we had a bit of a laugh about it.”
