Goalhanger, the production company behind some of Britain’s most successful podcasts, has officially gone into business.
The company has launched Goalhanger Ventures, a new investment and partnership arm designed to support creator-led media businesses with reliable scale programs across video, audio, social, live and commercial channels.
The division begins with two opening steps: an equity investment in Invisible Media, the company behind fast-growing digital platform Invisible Hand, and a commercial partnership with Backyard Cricket, the Yorkshire-born sports content brand created by brothers James and Mark Wood.
The strategy reads like a natural extension of Goalhanger’s record-breaking podcasting, which produced The Rest Is Politics, The Rest Is History and The Rest Is Football. With Ventures, the business shows that the next chapter is a program of irreverence, and it is increasingly weighted towards founders who are building a critical audience on YouTube and social video.
Supporting the Invisible Hand
The first check went to Invisible Media, founded by Charlie Tymon. The Invisible Hand has carved out an unusual niche, using clean, visually driven storytelling to make economics, geopolitics, business and culture digestible for younger audiences. New formats are on the rise, including the Invisible Game, which lifts the lid on the hidden economies behind everyday decisions.
That position is important for trade. According to Oxford Economics, YouTube’s creative ecosystem has contributed more than £2bn to the UK’s GDP in recent years and supports tens of thousands of equivalent full-time jobs – a market where creative, format-led creators are now a reliable alternative to mainstream broadcasting economies.
Tymon positioned the agreement as an acceleration rather than a pivot. “Goalhanger has built a strong track record of engaging audiences in intelligent, accessible conversation across politics, history and entertainment,” he said. “With Invisible Hand, we’ve already shown that young UK audiences engage at a high level with content about macroeconomics, business and geopolitics – proving there’s a real appetite for critical ideas when they’re delivered with clarity, power and purpose. With this investment, we’ll be able to use Goalhanger’s expertise in building, growing, growing the industry and scaling YouTube’s first business IP.”
From backyard cricket to a global brand
The second agreement is, on the face of it, a very different proposition. Backyard Cricket began as a closure project, when James and Mark Wood filmed irreverent videos of garden cricket in Yorkshire. Since then it has become one of the UK’s most unique brands of emerging sports creators, with the pair traveling internationally to create content that combines humor, personality and a clear love of the game.
Goalhanger will provide funding and strategic support to grow production, long-form video, sponsorships, commercial partnerships and merchandise, both parties share the top.
Navid Behroozi, Executive Producer at Backyard Cricket, put the concept bluntly. “James and Mark have already done the hardest part: they’ve gained a lot of attention by making cricket feel fun, unique and culturally relevant online. Our job now is to help turn that momentum into a sustainable content business. By giving them additional production support and helping to open up new commercial opportunities, we can allow them to spend more time doing what their viewers want – creating intelligent cricket entertainment.”
The founders themselves remain refreshingly unfocused. “Backyard cricket started with us playing in the garden, arguing over calls and sending DRS decisions up,” James and Mark Wood said in a joint statement. “It wasn’t meant to be too serious, but we’ve always taken cricket seriously. We’ve been obsessed with the channel for the past few years, and it’s been exciting to see how far the game has come. Partnering with Goalhanger gives us the opportunity to build on that and continue to grow Backyard Cricket even more.”
Why is this important to the broader market
Goalhanger Ventures comes at an important time. Social media creators are on track to overtake traditional media in global ad revenue, and incumbents are scrambling to adjust, with even the BBC making a landmark deal to produce original shows for YouTube. The infrastructure gap between a fast-growing channel and a well-run media business has, for many independent creators, been a major barrier to growth.
That gap is exactly what Ventures is designed to fill. The arm expands on work started in January by Accelerator, Goalhanger’s program to train and educate creators looking to transition from short-form IP to long-form, and was first flagged by trade media including the Press Gazette when Goalhanger took its external capital from The Chernin Group earlier this year.
Founder Jack Davenport said the philosophy is to measure carefully rather than absorb the company. “Goalhanger Ventures is about giving exceptional creator-led businesses the infrastructure to grow without losing what made them special in the first place. Invisible Media and Backyard Cricket are very different propositions, but both have a rare combination of editorial clarity, audience trust and genuine drive. Our role is to help them grow conceptually, commercially and creatively, while protecting their communities’ independence and autonomy.”
In Britain’s SME creator economy, where many of the country’s most visible faces are still running small, founder-led businesses, Goalhanger Ventures may prove one of the most sensible answers to the question of what comes after the virus.
