Independent production companies rather than established publishers dominate the UK podcast rankings when it comes to the popular true crime category.

Crime is a staple of traditional journalism. And since 2014 hit series Serial, podcasts have turned out to be an excellent format for longer crime investigations and reporting.

Casefile Presents podcast Troubled Waters has topped the Apple true crime charts in the UK. It investigates the mystery of a young woman’s suspicious death in 2011.

Wondery‘s Redhanded leads the way on Spotify. The weekly podcast started as hobby for its two hosts Hannah Maguire and Suruthi Bala and now claims four million listens per month.

Wondery has two other podcasts that feature on either top ten list, while Casefile Presents has one more.

There are no official charts for UK podcasts, with publishers rarely revealing their own numbers. The Apple and Spotify charts reveal a snapshot of which shows are doing best on each platform.

Neither Wondery nor Casefile Presents were willing to share listener figures with Press Gazette, but Wondery says it is seeing strong growth in listener numbers and commercial revenue.

Cocaine Inc., which was produced by The Times and Sunday Times in collaboration with News Corp Australia, claims to have clocked over 750,000 downloads in the first two months since release, with every expectation that they will hit the one million mark.

The Daily Mail team claims their podcasts have surpassed 30 million downloads in total, with their biggest hit The Trial of Lucy Letby previously topping true crime charts.

While Youtube views can be a good gauge of the reach of a podcast, sometimes accounting for over half of a podcast's total views, few true crime podcasts have taken off on the platform.

The notable exception is Rotten Mango, produced by Stephanie Soo with Ramble, which averaged more than one million views per episode on YouTube over the previous month.

Nonetheless, true crime podcasts are understood to be booming across the other platforms on which they are available.

This growth mirrors that seen in the rest of the podcast industry. Press Gazette recently revealed how listener numbers boomed for political podcasts during the course of the general election, while sports podcasts have also seen encouraging growth.

Chris Baughen, head of UK podcast content at Wondery, said that "podcasts are the perfect medium to build intimacy with an audience", precisely because this attention is well-suited to discussing highly personal subjects.

He added that "as a result of this bond, podcast listeners often develop a deep loyalty for their favourite shows and hosts, anticipating each new episode with excitement".

Madeleine Baran, who hosts The New Yorker's In the Dark, also said that "audio reporting has always been a powerful way to connect with people. There's something compelling about the experience of listening to an injustice be revealed."

Will Roe, podcast producer for The Times and Sunday Times, said that "when you're doing a digital piece, you're concentrated to a word count; that's the name of the game. Whereas with podcasting, episodes can be anywhere between 25 and 40 minutes, so you can add a lot more in."

According to Roe, the case of Andrew Malkinson, whose 2004 rape conviction was later overturned due to the discovery of new DNA on the scene, perfectly demonstrates the strength of podcasting.

He said of the discovery of the DNA: "For the newspaper, you write that up that week, and it goes out that Sunday. For a podcast audience, because they're not always newspaper readers - podcast listeners tend to be younger - I hold that drop, or twist, until episode four. So you can hold stuff back.

"When making a series, what you're looking for is enough beats of the story, with enough twists and turns, to last you four, to six, to eight episodes."

Spend on podcast advertising up 23% year-on-year

The growth in the podcast industry has led to a growth in spending on podcast advertising. The IAB digital media industry update reported a 23% increase in advertising spending on podcasts compared to 11% for the industry generally.

Though some publishers are concerned that the sensitivity of many true crime topics can put advertisers off, advertising is still a major source of revenue for true crime podcasts.

Declan Moore, head of international at Wondery, told Press Gazette that Wondery was also seeing revenue growth from exclusive subscription offerings.

Moore also stressed the important role of indirect revenue streams, such as live events, merchandise and publishing adaptations.

The Times and Sunday Times told Press Gazette that they hoped Cocaine Inc. would expose their journalism to a wider, more global, female-skewed audience.

Roe told Press Gazette that "the UK market for podcasts is quite small, so there's a lot of growth still to tap into".

He added: "If you can break into the US market, if your stories can translate over there - which I think all stories can do - then that's also a real avenue for growth."

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Twenty-two print local newspapers have closed in the UK in the past two years.

Press Gazette’s latest research suggests at least 293 local newspapers have closed since 2005.

Four titles were launched in print between the end of July 2022 and the start of August 2024.

The outlook was better for local digital outlets, however, with 20 launches outweighing 15 closures over the past two years (with one title appearing in both lists).

Press Gazette has compiled a list of local launches and closures since our last update in July 2022, based on reports of launches and closures across Press Gazette and Hold The Front Page. Editions of newspapers have been treated as separate titles.

The closure of titles only tells part of the story as many titles continue but with tiny staffs. Separate Press Gazette research has found that the UK’s three leading local newspaper publishers Newsquest, Reach and National World (which publish the vast majority of titles) employ around 3,000 journalists today compared with 9,000 in 2007.

Eight print titles closed in August 2022 alone as National World, Reach, and the smaller Champion Media Group all made cutbacks – coming days after the closure of five titles by Newsquest which made it into our last update.

Reach ended the free Manchester Weekly News, which had editions covering Trafford and Salford, and said at the time it no longer needed to “flood” the city with print to guarantee advertisers had a wide reach as this role is now fulfilled online instead.

The second-biggest spate of closures in the past two years came in January 2023, with six papers ending their runs – five owned by Highland News & Media, with some merged and the coverage of others moved to Grampian Online, and one by Tindle Newspapers.

One of the Highland titles to close was the Turriff Advertiser, a weekly title founded in 1933 to cover a town in Aberdeenshire. It was affectionately known as The Squeak.

Turiff becomes town without a local newspaper voice

Turiff, a town of around 5,000, now is only covered by Grampian Online.

David Porter, who edited the Turriff Advertiser before its closure, told Press Gazette that since the title ceased printing, “they don’t look to cover the area unless it’s something big.”

Porter said the same applies to the other areas where Highland closed titles, explaining: “The Inverurie Advertiser had the same situation, the Ellon Advertiser had the same situation. Ellon and Inverurie still nominally have a print title after the Inverurie Herald and the Ellon Times integrated into a single title. It does still get produced, but it has no local reporters, and it’s literally done by a guy sitting in The Scotsman’s office in Edinburgh; there’s no input locally.”

Regarding the move to an online model, Porter said: “They tried it with us and it didn’t work, because rural Aberdeenshire, like most of Scotland, has an ageing population. There are a lot of people who come up from down south in England to settle. So we have a much older age base here, and they are print readers.”

Porter believes that the lack of established local media outlets will be damaging for any future attempt to revive the art of local reporting. He said: “There isn’t even an opening for people for people who want work experience, there are no positions for them. That route has just gone.

“If you would get a classroom of journalism students, they all want to write on sport. They don’t want to write on local news. Nobody writes about farming, there’s probably only five of us left in the whole of Scotland.”

Local councillor Alastair Forsyth told Press Gazette that, since the closure: “I regularly get complaints from constituents that they’re not aware of the things going on right under their noses, simply because there is no public discourse for that information to be distributed.”

Forsyth believes this has driven people to sites such as Facebook, which has a page called My Turriff, to find local news. While this can help to fill the void, he sees it as less reliable, arguing that “the advantage of the press is that they have methods and systems that authenticate the veracity of news media”.

Newsquest Scotland also shut down two titles in May 2023. According to Hold The Front Page, a spokesperson said: “Closing our print editions will allow us to focus our resource more on what our audience is telling us they want – breaking news, multimedia content and engaging newsletters while retaining a strong presence in our communities.” Those two titles – the Dumbarton and Vale of Leven Reporter and the Irvine Times – continued to publish online and no jobs were lost.

UK local newspaper launches in print since August 2022

Four print titles were launched in the same period, exclusively by independent or smaller publishers, making it a net loss in print of 18 local newspapers.

Of the launches, one was weekly, two were fortnightly and one was monthly.

UK local news closures and launches in digital since August 2022

Reach's closure of 13 Live regional websites at the end of 2023 dominated digital closures in the period. All but two of the closures were in areas traditionally served by Reach's rivals Newsquest and National World.

The closures took place as part of a restructure that saw Reach cut 450 jobs.

Meanwhile Newsquest closed down The National Wales, its news website for the whole nation, in August 2022 after failing to grow its subscriber numbers to a sufficient level. It had been launched 18 months earlier.

And The QT, a subscriber-based website for the North East launched by a former Newcastle Journal editor, ceased publication in July this year just months after its launch.

However 19 other launches also took place, meaning they outweighed the effect of the closures.

Seven of those were part of an expansion of The Lead, a self-proclaimed "micro-mag" that "aim[s] to cover the sharp angles that define our life in the UK today", in the North West of England.

National World launched two local titles in the form of Nottingham World and Derby World. Leicester World was said to be planned to follow soon afterwards last year but it still does not appear to be live.

A number of titles launched via Substack in the form of newsletters of various frequency. Newsquest backed the launch of the Glasgow Wrap under editor Marissa MacWhirter in March 2024, advised by Michael MacLeod who launched his own editions for Edinburgh and London. All three are curation-based rather than primarily doing original reporting.

Also on Substack Mill Media, which has been praised for its other previous launches since 2020 starting with the Manchester Mill, went live with the Birmingham Dispatch in November 2023 while an independent group of journalists started investigative journalism-based The London Spy in May this year.

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National World’s website for Manchester has rebranded “with a new purpose and ethos centred on the people of the city” in an attempt to build its own niche in the city.

Manchester World was launched in 2021 as National World created a portfolio of new city websites to go with its legacy titles like the Yorkshire Post and The Scotsman acquired when it bought JPI Media at the start of that year.

The Manchester site, which has a team of six, has now rebranded with the new tagline: “Ordinary Mancs, extraordinary stories” as well as a logo inspired by the city’s bee symbol.

Editor Adam Lord told Press Gazette the people of Greater Manchester “will be at the heart of everything we do”, telling stories “from their point of view” and “celebrating” them.

The shift in purpose takes place as Manchester World seeks to find its own niche in a local news market already dominated by the Manchester Evening News (MEN), and supplemented by long-read newsletter start-up the Manchester Mill which has been going since 2020 and has more than 3,200 paying members.

According to Similarweb, the Manchester World website received 770,230 visits in July versus 36.5 million for the Manchester Evening News.

Lord acknowledged it is a “really crowded marketplace in Manchester, and I’m not just talking about the MEN, there’s loads of lifestyle and specialist websites”.

He said: “Obviously, we want to grow the audience. I think part of that is brand awareness. What I would say is that I don’t see the MEN as a competitor. What this is about is finding our place in Manchester, and giving people something different.”

He added: “It’s all good reporting on these major events, but it’s about how it impacts people and what they think about it.”

As well as Lord, Manchester World has two news reporters, a video journalist and journalists covering Manchester United and Manchester City.

He added: “With a smaller team, we can’t cover absolutely everything, which is why I say that trying to compete with the MEN would be folly.”

The relaunch will focus on ensuring that all stories are covered from the perspective of those affected, hoping to complement reporting from other titles, he said.

While National World has given its support to the relaunch, including the new branding coming from its marketing company MNA Digital, Lord said it was a “bottom-up, not top-down” decision.

“It’s always been something I wanted to do, but it’s come from the team and worked its way up. And there’s been a lot of support across the wider National World business for it, which I really appreciate.”

This means the relaunch is not something that will be rolled out to all sister titles as although there is a “big National World umbrella… each brand is effectively its own little enterprise as well”.

Lord said: “I’m grateful that National World have allowed us to try some stuff, and we’ll see how it goes from there.”

Ultimately, Lord said, increasing the site’s brand awareness and audience will have “a commercial impact, positive ones if we get it going in the right direction. But what I would say is that I am keen to grow, potentially, a different kind of audience to what local news has been trying to… I do want to grow a more sustainable audience.”

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Five of the biggest news publishers in the UK and US have increased their core Tiktok followings by more than two million people in just over 18 months.

Press Gazette has updated our ranking of the biggest and fastest-growing news publisher Tiktok accounts, having last done so in January 2023.

The analysis features the 70 news publishers from Press Gazette’s most recent lists of the 50 biggest UK and US news websites that were found on Tiktok. 

Nineteen of the publishers are not included in the growth comparisons as they were not included in our previous analysis – with some of those likely to have been more recent sign-ups to Tiktok. 

The rankings look at each publisher’s main account only but it should be acknowledged that some news outlets create separate accounts for different verticals.

Reuters and The New York Times saw by far and away the biggest percentage increase in their Tiktok following during the period, but this is due to their small followings at the start of 2023.

Among those with over 100,000 followers at the time of our last update, the 371% growth seen by BBC News was the largest.

CNN (238%), GB News (221%), Yahoo News (218%), CNBC (205%) and The Independent (204%) were the other larger accounts to more than triple their follower count.

There was also some impressive growth for local news sites such as the Liverpool Echo (204%) and the Manchester Evening News (193%), though Newcastle’s Chronicle Live (464%) remains small (6,200 followers) despite that growth.

At the other end of the spectrum, the Washington Post (13%) and The Telegraph (14%) took the least advantage of TikTok’s growth.

In terms of absolute growth, there was no matching the Daily Mail, which added 5.6 million new followers over the period. This was more than two million more than any other news publisher in our analysis.

Insider, a section of Business Insider, was a distant second place, adding a still impressive 3.5 million new followers in the period.

CNN (3.1 million), Sky News (2.9 million) and BBC News (2.9 million) also added more than two million followers each since the start of 2023.

The New York Times added almost 750,000 followers from a starting point of under 5,000, while Reuters added over 175,000 from a base of less than 1,000.

Who are the biggest news publishers on Tiktok in the UK and US?

The Daily Mail, which was in third place behind ABC News in January 2023, is now leading the way at the top with nearly ten million followers for its main account on the platform at the time of writing. (Between our data collection and time of publication, it has now surpassed ten million.)

One of its smaller accounts, Daily Mail UK, which has 980,800 followers, would still place comfortably in the top half of the outlets considered. It celebrated surpassing ten million across all its accounts, which also include a global news account and others dedicated to crime, sport, royals, showbiz, the US and Australia, in January this year.

It does have a smaller Tiktok following than Ladbible (13.8 million followers on its main account), but although the younger brand was top of the ranking in 2023 it was not included in our latest update as it is not currently ranked in the top 50 news websites in the UK.

Of the 70 newsbrands covered in this analysis, 21 were followed by more than a million people. This was more than the number (19) who had followings below 100,000.

This increased reach comes off the back of further growth for TikTok, which is now used for news by 8% of people in 12 key markets including the UK and US according to the 2024 Reuters Institute Digital News Report - up from 1% in 2020.

Across all countries surveyed where Tiktok operates, it is now used for news by 13% of people - overtaking X/Twitter (10%) for the first time - and 23% of 18 to 24-year-olds, the report found.

However 27% of Tiktok users said they struggle to detect trustworthy news on the site, the highest of all social media platforms covered. And only 34% of Tiktok users said they pay attention to journalists or news media, preferring online influencers and personalities. By contrast, on X 53% of users say they pay attention to journalists or news media.

Note: This article was updated after publication to add Channel 4 News, which we discovered had been wrongly missed off our list of the UK's top 50 publishers and therefore met the criteria for inclusion on this ranking.

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AI search chatbot Perplexity is donating $250,000 towards research into the future of AI and news.

The money will go to Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, supporting research conducted by their Knight Lab.

Knight Lab will also receive access to Perplexity’s data, staff and publisher partners so it can learn how news content shows up in the chatbot’s responses and how newsrooms are approaching AI.

The news comes a week after Perplexity launched its publisher programme, through which it will share ad revenue with publishers whose content they reference. Chief business officer Dmitry Shevelenko told Press Gazette that “we need there to be a vibrant, thriving business model for journalism because there’s no scenario where we win and journalism loses”.

He was speaking after criticism of Perplexity’s practices from several publishers including Forbes and Conde Nast which both sent legal letters complaining about their copyrighted content being used in answers without permission.

The new donation will aim to explore “how AI companies can collaborate with news publishers to promote a thriving internet ecosystem”, according to chief executive Aravind Srinivas.

The company said the research “will continue to explore how AI can empower journalism workflows in a way that encourages transparency and accuracy, and additional AI capabilities we can develop to support reporting.

“The Lab plans will explore ways that generative AI can power tools for journalism and the new ways generative AI can improve news consumers’ experiences with media.”

The donation marks Perplexity’s first philanthropic gift.

The Knight Lab produces “open-source, adaptable, and lightweight tools for media makers”. The most popular of these is Timeline JS, which allows publishers to tell stories through interactive timelines and has been used by more than 250,000 people.

The Lab also develops prototypes of tools for reporting, data management, research and storytelling.

Projects currently lined up include a tool to better create AI-generated images for an article given the text, as well as a tool to create an influencer-style TikTok video given the prompt of an article.

Medill professor and Knight chair in digital media strategy Jeremy Gilbert said that “the gift from Perplexity provides vital resources to research AI and media”.

“AI is changing the landscape at a rapid pace, and Medill is committed to understanding how the industry will need to evolve, and how we can use this technology responsibly.”

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The Sun’s Victoria Newton has revealed she felt “quite lonely” at times in her capacity as editor in the wake of the paper’s revelation that a BBC star had been taken off air after “paying a teenager for sexual pictures”.

While The Sun chose not to name the star at the centre of the scandal, journalist Vicky Flind later revealed it was her husband Huw Edwards.

The Metropolitan Police investigated the claims but concluded there was “no information to indicate that a criminal offence has been committed”.

The Sun then became the subject of criticism for reporting the claims, intensified by the news that Edwards had been hospitalised for a serious mental health episode.

But with Edwards now having pleaded guilty to three counts of having indecent images of children, Sun editor Victoria Newton has defended her paper’s original coverage of Edwards on BBC Radio 4’s The Media Show.

‘Everyone was saying we had made this story up’

Newton noted that The Sun “never said it was a criminal offence” in its reporting last year, adding that “it’s a very grey area, it’s a very complicated bit of law.

“We made a strong decision at the time that we weren’t going to publish any of the evidence, or any more background, so he could recover. The problem for us was a big one, because everyone was saying we must have made this story up.”

However The Sun had plenty of evidence to substantiate its reporting, including texts, Whatsapp messages, social media messages, and bank statements, Newton said.

She said the paper had been “getting information on Edwards’ behaviour going back to 2018… There was a pattern of behaviour; it was always the same modus operandi… so we knew that before this family came to us.”

But when the parents of the young man involved contacted The Sun with their concerns, Newton decided it was right to publish the allegations. She said: “With other stories, we’d always looked at them individually and gone ‘is there public interest in that? No there isn’t. Not interested’.

“But this particular story stood out because there was a young person at the heart of this who was in a desperate situation, highly vulnerable, and the parents felt they had nowhere else to go. They’d gone to the BBC, they talked to the police, and they got nowhere, and they just wanted the payments to stop. So that’s why they came to us in desperation.”

Newton continued: “At one stage, we maybe had 20 lawyers in the room, it felt like that anyway. But ultimately the loneliness of being an editor often is when you’ve had all the legal advice you can, and the advice around IPSO which is our self-regulatory body… ultimately you have to make that decision.

“So when you get attacked for that, that can also feel quite lonely. But we have an army of good people who help us hopefully make the right decisions.”

Sun editor says Huw Edwards arrest ‘should have been revealed at the time’

Newton claimed that numerous newspapers had heard rumours that Edwards had been arrested in November last year but were never given confirmation by police so were unable to report it.

Ultimately the Met did not tell journalists Edwards had been charged in June until Monday 29 July, two days before he was due in court.

“We all tried,” Newton said. “We went to the Met, and with various other newspapers the rumours went round, and I was certain that it was true. But until you have the Met confirm it, you can’t go with it. And I know that lots of other reporters tried it and they were met with the rule of silence.”

Newton expressed her frustration with the opacity that now surrounds celebrity arrests and charges, blaming rulings that have “set the tone for what people can and can’t publish”.

A Supreme Court ruling in 2022, Bloomberg LP vs ZXC, has had a significant impact on the ability to report on early criminal proceedings as it determined that a person under investigation cannot be named by the media until they are charged.

Newton added that “you take a huge risk as a publisher if you decide to say ‘okay, I’m going to name that person who’s been arrested because it’s in the public interest’.

“You’re potentially liable to be sued for millions of pounds. So you can imagine being a small publisher or local newspaper, and you’re never going to take that risk.”

She added: “The public should have a right to know, certainly when someone’s been charged with such a serious offence. Often you find with cases of sexual abuse, the only way you can find people guilty in court is more victims coming forward. So I’m a firm believer that the arrest should have been revealed at the time.”

Sun editor: BBC News coverage made us ‘vilified’

Newton primarily blamed the BBC for turning the narrative of the scandal onto The Sun when the Metropolitan Police found no evidence of criminality and Edwards was being treated in hospital.

The BBC was originally criticised for focusing on the scandal too much, though it claimed its coverage was proportionate.

Newton said: “I did feel, and I have to say it was BBC News that did this, the point that changed the story in terms of us being vilified by the friends of Mr Edwards, and by various people who worked at the BBC, was when the BBC News at Six ran a letter from the young man saying that the story was total rubbish. And they gave us an hour’s notice on that.

“I had already been in discussions with BBC News saying ‘do you understand he’s highly vulnerable?’ He’d had Huw Edwards on the phone threatening him that he was going to destroy his family if he went ahead with the story, and that he had to make it stop.

“That person was under so much pressure, and I did warn BBC News, but they ran that anyway, and that was the thing that changed the narrative.”

Since Edwards pleaded guilty to separate offences, the young person has come forward to tell the Daily Mirror he now feels like he was “taken pure advantage of” by the broadcaster but that he “felt obliged to protect him” after he was named last year.

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Former Emap CEO Natasha Christie-Miller has ambitious growth plans for Financial Times-backed start-ups newsbrand Sifted as she replaces Caspar Woolley as chair of the title.

Sifted, a website covering the world of European start-ups, was launched in 2019 by FT innovations editor John Thornhill and startup entrepreneur Caspar Woolley. They aimed to reach a younger generation of European entrepreneurs who may not be reading the FT.

Private equity firm ScaleUp Capital purchased a 25% share in Sifted in 2021 and therefore became its biggest shareholder. The FT, whose original 25% share was diluted by that investment, is its second-biggest, and the rest of the business is owned by other investors.

The site now says it reaches 120,000 people with its newsletter Sifted Daily and claims 32% year-on-year growth in subscriber numbers for its Pro offering.

The Sifted Summit is due to take place in London on 2 and 3 October and will bring together 3,000 founders, operators and investors from across Europe.

Woolley remains a significant shareholder in the business.

Christie-Miller told Press Gazette: “What I really like about B2B media is that we are genuinely giving fantastically helpful information and insight to a professional audience to help them do their jobs better, and to help businesses develop.”

She added: “The single point we focused on [at Emap], and this gets replicated at Sifted, is asking: ‘Who is the beneficiary of our content? Who needs that support?’ And you’re having a very focused idea of who your market is. The amount of energy that goes into that is absolutely critical, because everything starts from there.

“If we’ve got an engaged audience – our start-ups – then we’ve earned the right to invite the investors and the business partners into that community. If we start to get confused that other audiences are more important, then the whole thing falls apart. And Sifted has been really clear from day one about who the most important audience is, and who we’re here to help, which is the start-up community in Europe in tech.

“We can be a lot bigger. We are only a few years old, and it’s rare that these businesses launch, so the opportunity to come and work here is fantastic.”

Growing online subscribers is a key part of the Sifted growth plan.

Christie-Miller said: “I’m a firm believer in value-exchange between fantastic information that is of high enough quality that our audience absolutely understand, and want to pay for it.

“We will grow paid-for subscriptions. We will grow our reach with start-ups across Europe. There will be a really good value-exchange with each of those different audiences. With start-ups, in some instances that’s money, or certain content, and in other circumstances, it’s a different value-exchange, whether that’s us getting to know them well, or about sharing information and insight.

“Our ambition is more customers, higher reach, higher-value content, and more paid-for subscribers.”

Christie-Miller was chief executive of Top Right Group’s publishing division Emap from 2010 to 2015 when the company was bought by Ascential. She then became CEO of Ascential Intelligence and left the business last year.

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Sport-related podcasts are booming in the UK with the top-rated shows seeing millions of downloads per month.

Gary Lineker-owned production company Goalhanger leads the sector with The Rest Is Football achieving nearly eight million listens per month on Youtube alone (helped by the high profile of its presenter line-up Alan Shearer and Micah Richards alongside Lineker, all of whom also front BBC One TV football coverage.

Like most podcast companies, Goalhanger does not share its total listener numbers – but they are likely to be at least double the Youtube figure.

Football dominates Press Gazette’s sport podcast ranking, helped by the fact our survey coincided with the Euros football tournament.

Separate Press Gazette research this month revealed how listener numbers for political podcasts boomed during the general election.

Top of the charts for sport podcasts in audio and video:

There are no official UK podcast download figures and individual podcast brands rarely reveal their numbers. Youtube views can account for up to half a podcast's listener figures and Press Gazette has published video views for the leading sport podcasts which appear on the platform:

The Guardian told Press Gazette that Football Daily, a more regular version of their usual Football Weekly, saw a 77% increase in viewership relative to their pre-tournament average going into Euro 2024.

Football Weekly producer Joel Grove said the community element is key for podcasts: “Audience questions and emails are a fundamental part of Football Weekly. Audience questions are, nine times out of ten, better than anything Max [Rushden] and I can write. And if there’s a flurry of emails on a particular topic, we’ll use that to inform what the content of the show is. I think having that symbiotic relationship with the audience is different to other forms of media.”

The High Performance Podcast, hosted by former BT Sport and BBC presenter Jake Humphrey and Professor Damian Hughes, was ranked third in the UK on the Apple podcasts chart in the sport category at time of writing. It focuses on interviews with sportspeople and other successful individuals.

Humphrey said podcasts are popular partly because of the different kinds of conversations they produce.

He told Press Gazette that “the big difference between what I did previously, which was hosting big sports events, is that people would come to listen and watch those sports events, to be honest, regardless of the job that I did. Whereas, when it comes to something like High Performance, we are only going to have the millions of views that we get every year if the quality is really high.”

High Performance claims 10 million listens per quarter

High Performance claims more than 10 million listens across all platforms per quarter and has doubled year on year.

Humphrey said: “I think that our show is also an antithesis to the modern discourse which is about anger and strong opinions... I think that what we’re there to do is not really to have an opinion, we’re just there to open someone up and have an honest conversation about who they actually are.”

Humphrey said when he was exploring the idea of High Performance he “spent quite a long time meeting various people in television, but the truth is that people didn’t really see the vision.

“Television commissions are hard things to get away. I also started thinking about the fact that I love entrepreneurship and I love controlling what I’m doing and controlling my own destiny.

“What I didn’t really want was some TV commissioner saying ‘you have to change this, you have to change that’, because the single most important thing for High Performance, and I think what makes successful podcasts successful, is that the focus is only on the audience.”

Humphrey said the podcast is a commercial success and he sees a bright future as long as it continues to follow its audience:

“Our job is to go where the audience are. Some people want to watch on an app where they get loads of additional information that we’ve created. Some people want to listen to it in the car on their way to work. Some people want to sit and watch it in a beautifully-lit studio, with the most expensive TV cameras you can buy, on their big 4K TV; we give you an option for that as well. Some people just want clips on social media; we’re all over Tiktok and Instagram. Our job is to produce an amazing product, but then to go and find the audience to enjoy that amazing product.”

Goalhanger’s Football Cliches digests the latest events through the lens of familiar platitudes in the game and has been running since 2020

Presenter Adam Hurrey, who is also a journalist for The Athletic, said: “You want a podcast to be made by people who sound happy and passionate to be there, and not just doing it to promote something else.”

The Cycling Podcast has been going for more than a decade.

Presenter Lionel Birnie said: “By the end of 2012, recognising the direction of travel for print media (redundancies, title closures, squeezed budgets, fewer opportunities for freelancers) we could see the writing on the wall.

“The podcasting wave was gathering pace and we got started at the right time to attract a big enough audience to make it worth our while but at a time when we could learn the medium without intense scrutiny.”

Initial sponsorship from electronics company Sharp turned into an increased commitment after a highly successful 2013 Tour de France, and the podcast then transformed into a weekly show. In the 11 years since starting, The Cycling Podcast team have produced around 1,500 episodes and achieved 100 million downloads, hitting a million downloads a month over the course of a typical Tour de France.

Advertising and sponsorship are the main drivers of revenue for podcasts, though some – like High Performance – also sell subscriptions which offer bonus episodes and ad-free content.

Many successful podcasts have also expanded into live events.

Robert Abel, head of audio business and strategy at The Guardian, said: “When you bring all of the things together – the book, the merchandise, the tour, the podcast – they mutually amplify each other, but it’s also a brand exercise as well... everyone goes to the show, has a great night, and talks to their friends about the podcast.”

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