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The Economics of Celebrity Podcasts: Revenue Streams Behind Ant & Dec’s New Show

tthesound

2026-02-10

9 min read

Breaks down how celebrity podcasts like Ant & Dec’s can earn from ads, sponsors, subscriptions and branded channels using Goalhanger’s model as a benchmark.

Hook — Why creators and publishers should care about Ant & Dec’s podcast move

Creators and audio publishers wrestle with the same questions: which monetization levers actually pay, how to size realistic revenue expectations, and what trade-offs each model forces. When TV giants like Ant & Dec launch a podcast and a branded channel in 2026, it’s not just celebrity gossip — it’s a live case study in turning fame into sustainable audio income. This piece breaks down the revenue opportunities — ads, sponsorships, subscriptions, and branded channels — and uses Goalhanger’s recent success as a calibration point to build practical, numeric earnings scenarios you can learn from.

Context: Ant & Dec, Belta Box and the 2026 audio landscape

In January 2026 the BBC reported that Ant & Dec will launch Hanging Out as part of a new digital entertainment hub — Belta Box — that bundles podcasts, short video, and archival clips across YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Facebook. That multi-platform strategy is the modern playbook: treat a podcast as the anchor content and amplify it with video clips, social-first hooks and community spaces.

At the same time, podcast subscription models matured fast through late 2025 and early 2026. Production company Goalhanger announced it exceeded 250,000 paying subscribers — roughly £15m/year in subscriber revenue at an average £60 per subscriber — demonstrating how a networked, membership-driven approach can scale. The Press Gazette coverage of that figure is a useful benchmark when estimating what celebrity podcasts can achieve.

Goalhanger now has more than 250,000 paying subscribers across its network — average price ~£60/year = ~£15m annual subscriber income.

Overview: The full monetization toolbox for celebrity-hosted podcasts

Celebrity shows have advantages — built-in brand recognition, mainstream reach, and sponsorship appeal — but they also face higher expectations for production and rights management. The primary revenue buckets to consider are:

Dynamic and host-read ads (programmatic or direct)
Direct sponsorships and brand integrations
Subscriptions / memberships (ad-free, bonus content, community)
Branded channels and video monetization (YouTube ad revenue, memberships)
Ancillary revenue (merch, live shows, licensing, affiliate links)

What’s changed in 2026?

Better targeting, not just volume: privacy shifts and AI-driven audience signals mean advertisers pay premiums for quality, engaged listeners instead of pure download counts.
Subscriptions normalized: consumers now accept paid tiers for premium podcasts and bundled media memberships.
Video-first distribution: repurposing podcast episodes into short-form clips on TikTok/YouTube drives discovery and sponsorship upsells.

Ads: predictable baseline revenue (but limited upside)

Ads remain the easiest-to-scale income source for most podcasts. In 2026 you’ll see two main flavors:

Programmatic / dynamic ads: automated insertion, lower CPMs, easy scale.
Host-read / direct-sold ads: premium CPMs, higher engagement, better brand fits.

Typical CPM ranges in 2026 (UK market, estimates):

Programmatic pre/mid-roll: £8–£18 CPM
Host-read premium inventory: £18–£40+ CPM

How to calculate: revenue per episode = (downloads / 1000) × CPM × # of ad slots.

Concrete examples for Ant & Dec (weekly show, 52 episodes/year):

Conservative: 100,000 downloads/episode × 2 host-read ads × £18 CPM = £3,600/episode → £187,200/year.
Realistic: 500,000 downloads/episode × 2 ads × £20 CPM = £20,000/episode → £1.04m/year.
Optimistic: 1.5m downloads/episode × 3 premium ads × £25 CPM = £112,500/episode → £5.85m/year.

These numbers scale with reach and creative ad placement. Host-read ads and serialized integrations command higher CPMs and long-term brand relationships.

Sponsorships & branded integrations: the biggest single-ticket deals

Direct sponsorships (season-long partners, single-episode exclusives or integrated segments) are where celebrities capture big checks. Brands pay for:

Audience reach and demographic fit
Association with the hosts’ credibility
Cross-platform amplification (YouTube, IG, TikTok)

Estimate ranges per season or per episode vary wildly, but a few grounded guidelines help:

Single-episode brand read (UK mainstream celebrity): £10k–£100k+
Season-long presenting sponsor: £250k–£2m+, depending on reach and deliverables

For Ant & Dec, with TV-level name recognition and cross-platform reach, a primary sponsor for a season (52 episodes) could realistically fall in the mid-six-figure to low-seven-figure range if the brand secures exclusivity and cross-channel rights.

Subscriptions & memberships — Goalhanger’s model as a benchmark

Goalhanger’s January 2026 milestone — 250,000 paying subscribers at an average £60/year — is the clearest proof point that scaled podcast membership works. But not every show will mirror that success. The key variables are:

Conversion rate: percentage of listeners who pay
Average revenue per user (ARPU): price and billing cadence
Retention / churn: how long subscribers stay

Practical conversion benchmarks (industry observations, 2026):

Niche, highly engaged shows: 2–5% conversion
Mainstream celebrity shows: 0.3–1.5% conversion — broad reach but lower relative engagement

Apply Goalhanger logic to Ant & Dec: if the podcast averages 1m unique monthly listeners and converts 1% into paid subscribers at £60/year, that’s 10,000 subs → £600,000/year. Scale conversion to 2% and revenue doubles to £1.2m. If they emulate Goalhanger’s network tactics (bundling shows, exclusive access, live perks) conversion can materially improve.

Key strategic notes for subscriptions:

Own the paywall: use direct subscriptions through your site to minimize platform fees (Apple/Spotify in-app take can be 15–30% depending on arrangements). See identity and verification options for direct commerce in this space: identity verification vendor comparison.
Package benefits: ad-free listening, bonus episodes, early tickets, Discord/Slack community, merch discounts.
Price testing: try monthly vs annual discounts and tiered pricing (e.g., £5/month or £60/year) — Goalhanger's mix of monthly and annual payments split roughly 50/50.

Branded channels & video monetization

Ant & Dec’s Belta Box strategy intentionally packages video + audio. That opens additional revenue lines:

YouTube ad revenue and channel memberships
Sponsor deals that include video deliverables (pre-roll clips, branded segments)
Short-form content sponsorships — a powerful driver for social monetisation

Rough YouTube revenue ranges in 2026 (estimates): £1–£6 per 1000 ad views depending on region, content type and ad fill. If Belta Box clips regularly pull millions of views per month, mid-six-figure annual YouTube revenue is attainable in the realistic scenario. Don’t forget YouTube Premium revenue and channel memberships as incremental gains.

Ancillary revenue: merch, live shows, licensing

These are often the highest-margin streams for established talent.

Merch: T-shirts, limited drops tied to episodes; gross margins can be 40–60% with direct-to-fan ecommerce. Read about sustainable merch strategies: Rethinking Fan Merch for Economic Downturns.
Live shows: recorded live podcasts and full theatre runs — per-night revenue is venue-dependent but can generate £50k–£500k for a successful tour. See micro-event and pop-up field lessons: Field Toolkit Review: Running Profitable Micro Pop-Ups in 2026.
Licensing: clips for compilation shows, TV reruns, or rights to archive content can bring one-time or recurring licensing fees.

Costs and net profitability

Gross revenue is only half the story. Production costs for a celebrity podcast with video, staff, legal clearance for clips, music licensing and cross-platform editing often range from 25–50% of gross revenue for a lean operation, and higher when you scale production value.

For example, a £2.5m gross revenue year might leave £1.25–1.8m after costs, depending on staffing and whether the team outsources post-production or builds in-house capabilities. Rights management for archival TV footage (a likely element of Belta Box) adds incremental legal and clearance costs that must be budgeted.

Three realistic 12-month earnings scenarios for Ant & Dec’s Hanging Out (using Goalhanger for context)

Below are simplified, illustrative scenarios combining streams. These are not predictions but modeled outcomes using current 2026 market dynamics and Goalhanger as a membership benchmark.

Conservative — £0.9m–£1.2m/year

Downloads/episode: 100k
Ad revenue (2 host-read ads, £18 CPM): £187k/year
Sponsorships (season partners & spot deals): £520k/year
Subscriptions (0.2% conversion, 300–500 subs): ~£18–30k/year
YouTube & socials: ~£100k/year
Merch/live/license: ~£80k/year
Gross: ~£900k–£1.2m; Net after costs: ~£500k–£800k

Realistic — £2.5m–£4m/year

Downloads/episode: 500k
Ad revenue (2 ads, £20 CPM): £1.04m/year
Sponsorships: £600k–£1m/year
Subscriptions (1% conversion of 500k+ audience): £300–£600k/year
YouTube & socials: £400–£600k/year
Merch/live/licensing: £200–£400k/year
Gross: ~£2.5m–£4m; Net after costs: ~£1.5m–£2.5m

Optimistic — £8m–£13m+/year (Goalhanger-scale upside)

Downloads/episode: 1.5m+
Ads & direct integrations: £5–7m/year
Sponsorships: £2m+/year (global brand partners, multi-channel rights)
Subscriptions (1.5–3% conversion on 1m+ listeners): £900k–£2.4m/year
YouTube & socials: £1–2m/year
Live/merch/licensing: £1–2m+/year
Gross: £8m–£13m+; Net after costs: £5m–£9m

Note: Goalhanger’s £15m/year subscriber outcome assumes a network strategy with many shows and cross-sell. For a single show to hit that, Ant & Dec would need both high conversion and a multi-show network or premium bundles.

Actionable tactics for creators and publishers (how to turn a celebrity show into a diversified revenue machine)

Start with audience measurement: require first-party metrics (email, signups) and granular listen analytics to show advertisers value, not just downloads.
Test subscription tiers early: offer a low-friction annual deal and exclusive micro-content (bonus episodes, live Q&As) to prove value.
Sell bundled sponsorships: package podcast, short-form video, and social placements into single sponsor deals at a premium.
Own commerce channels: use a direct store for merch and use live events as both revenue and marketing engines for subscriptions.
Keep ad inventory flexible: mix dynamic ads for long-tail revenue and a limited amount of premium host-read slots for top-dollar deals.
Invest in rights management: clear archival clips and music upfront — failure to do so creates legal drag and lost revenue potential.
Use AI to scale personalization: automated show notes, transcriptions, and personalized email sequences increase discoverability and conversion without linear labor costs. See approaches to creative AI video and personalization here: How AI Vertical Video Is Changing Restaurant Menus.
Negotiate platform economics: wherever possible, drive subscribers off-platform or negotiate lower platform fees for high-profile shows.

Final thoughts — what Ant & Dec’s launch signals for the market in 2026

Their move underscores several trends: celebrities are treating podcasts as central IP generators, not side projects; multi-format distribution (audio + video + community) maximizes sponsor and subscription value; and network-style membership models (à la Goalhanger) are now a realistic path to seven-figure recurring income.

For creators and publishers the lesson is clear: diversify, measure, and package. Ads buy you reach, sponsorships buy you scale and premium fees, subscriptions buy predictability, and a strong branded channel unlocks cross-platform deals and commerce. If Ant & Dec play the cards thoughtfully — bundling exclusive content, rights-cleared archival material, and a robust membership proposition — the economics can be substantial, and Goalhanger’s momentum shows the market is ready to pay.

Call to action

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thesound

Contributor

Senior editor and content strategist. Writing about technology, design, and the future of digital media. Follow along for deep dives into the industry's moving parts.