‘The first podcast election’: Political podcasts explode in run-up to polling day (2024)

Top political podcasts saw downloads rise 50% or more during the 2024 UK general election, according to their publishers, leading one to dub it “the first podcast election”.

Press Gazette has heard from podcast company Acast, hosting platform Spotify and publishers including the BBC, Telegraph, Politico and Sky, who all report significant listenership growth over the election.

Although podcast publishers are secretive about numbers Press Gazette estimates market leader The Rest Is Politics is likely to have achieved more than ten million downloads in June. No-one from publisher Goalhanger responded to requests for comment.

‘Truly the first podcast election’

Podcast production and hosting company Acast told Press Gazette that, “from the announcement through the week of the election, our political podcasts saw an average growth of 53%”.

Sam Shetabi, Acast’s UK content director, added that “podcasting in general has a bit of a summer lull between June and August… whereas all of our news podcasts have completely bucked that trend”.

He said that Political Currency, the Persephonica and Acast podcast featuring former politicians George Osborne and Ed Balls, had been “a superstar” within the group, seeing episode downloads rise 81% between the week the election was called and the week it ended.

Besides Political Currency, he said, the FT’s Political Fix grew by 39%, The Guardian’s Today in Focus grew 47% and The Times’ How To Win An Election grew 43%.

He added the growth had been “greater than that of a lot of our football shows”, despite the surge in listening for those podcasts amid the Euros.

A spokesperson for Spotify, one of the biggest podcast hosting platforms, painted a similar picture, telling Press Gazette: “Total hours played of news and politics podcasts in the UK have increased by 49% over the last 12 months.

“Listeners in the UK to news and politics podcasts have increased 6% over the last 12 months, so there’s been a slight increase in the number of people listening, but a big increase in how long they’re listening for.

“The Rest is Politics is the top political podcast in June 2024, and in 2024 overall [the BBC’s] Newscast has seen the most growth over the last year, increasing its listenership by 64%.”

The BBC, which has increasingly been trying to direct its podcast audiences toward its own platform BBC Sounds, said Sounds saw a record number of listeners on the morning following the election.

A spokesperson said: “Eight out of ten UK adults came to the BBC across all platforms as audiences tuned in to BBC election coverage in their millions.

“The week of the general election was the biggest week for BBC News on BBC Sounds in at least the last 18 months, with results day (5 July) the second biggest day on BBC Sounds overall. We also saw significant audience interest in our election podcasts.”

Other publishers also furnished Press Gazette directly with figures about their increases.

Global said that The News Agents, hosted by former BBC presenters Emily Maitlis, Jon Sopel and Lewis Goodall, is nearing 100 million all-time downloads and that “listens are up 45% since the general election was called”. The podcast hit 10 million downloads in December 2022, three months after launch.

The Telegraph’s The Daily T, which launched only shortly before the election was called and hosted the first election trail interview with Rishi Sunak, told Press Gazette its election night and results day episodes “performed on average 45% above a typical episode’s performance”.

“The Rishi Sunak interview was listened to 84% more times than the average episode,” a spokesperson for the publisher added, and “podcast listens the week of the election were 2.7 times higher than the week prior to the election announcement.”

[Read more: Why Telegraph’s Tominey and Ahmed think there is room for another daily podcast]

Politics at Jack and Sam’s, a co-production between Politico and Sky News presented by the former’s UK editor Jack Blanchard and the latter’s deputy political editor Sam Coates, has hit two million downloads since it launched in October.

It had its most successful week following the election, “with more than double the listeners on Monday 8 July than the week before”.

Another Sky podcast, Electoral Dysfunction — fronted by political editor Beth Rigby and politicians Ruth Davidson and Jess Phillips — has also hit two million downloads, having launched in March.

Sky said Electoral Dysfunction was “growing week on week and achieving above our targets” and that its election debrief episode the day after the vote “was the most successful episode to date, with a 40% increase in audience”.

Both the podcasts saw record downloads in June, the publishers said — in part because they increased their frequency, with Electoral Dysfunction going up to twice a week and Politics at Jack and Sam’s going out every weekday.

Dave Terris, the head of audio at Sky News, said it had been “truly the first podcast election”.

“During an average day on the campaign trail, our political editor Beth Rigby and deputy political editor Sam Coates would write an analysis for online, do a TV package for the News at Ten and then discuss the big political news of the moment on Electoral Dysfunction, Politics at Jack and Sam’s and the Sky News Daily…

“Both Electoral Dysfunction and Politics at Jack and Sam’s have reached two million downloads. Considering that nine months ago neither of these propositions existed, we’re extremely pleased to see how they’ve been received.”

Will the influx of new listeners stick around now the election is over?

That listeners would take an interest in politics during an election does not necessarily mean that they will stick around once it’s over. But Acast’s Shetabi said: “We would expect there to be a nice long tail that you retain…

“They will favour one of those shows that they particularly enjoyed listening to over this election period, and I expect there to be growth in all of those shows that continues for the rest of the year.”

Asked how advertisers had taken to the growth of political podcasting given the well-publicised reticence of brands to advertise against some hard news, Shetabi said: “I think there was some nervousness around the election period itself… lots of brands chose to try to [advertise against] other content, and also because we had the Euros there were lots of other opportunities for lots of other ears to reach.”

But he added: “What we have seen with advertisers is if they’ve changed their plans, they’ve moved campaigns to later in the summer, rather than cancel them.

“There’s not really a sensitivity around news and politics per se. It’s more around the current context [of an election].”

Meanwhile, Politico’s executive director of advertising and partnerships for Europe, Rolant Glyn, told Press Gazette: “We’ve had sustained interest from new advertisers to engage with our podcasting output and, in particular, Politics at Jack and Sam’s since its launch.

“The increased number of listeners and subscribers shows an appetite to hear from Jack and Sam’s unique perspective on British politics which we’re expecting to contribute to revenue growth in the second half of the year.”

Podcasters are secretive about exact listener numbers

Unlike radio, television or (to a decreasing extent) print circulations, there is no auditor for podcast audience sizes.

Although multiple publishers were generous enough to provide Press Gazette with data on how their listenership had increased over the election, none were willing to hand over average episode download or monthly listener numbers.

However, Press Gazette did gain access to a copy of the media kit for Goalhanger, the Gary Lineker-founded publisher of the most popular politics podcast, The Rest is Politics.

The media kit appears to date from before the launch of the also highly popular The Rest is Politics USA (which debuted this year) and The Rest is Entertainment (which debuted in November 2023). It claims The Rest is Politics receives eight million downloads monthly, making it the second most popular podcast in Goalhanger’s stable after The Rest is History, which receives ten million downloads monthly.

The Rest is Football, Goalhanger’s third most popular podcast, was on three million downloads a month at the time the kit was issued and The Rest is Money, hosted by Robert Peston and Steph McGovern, was on 500,000.

The publisher said listeners average 40 minutes per episode, that two-thirds of its audience are aged 28 to 59 and 70% of its audience is male.

Which UK political podcasts were popular on Youtube during the UK general election

Apple Podcasts and Spotify do display in-app leaderboards showing which podcasts are most popular, both overall and by topic. Press Gazette has captured the top ten from both leaderboards on Wednesday 17 July below.

Although neither Apple nor Spotify display audience numbers, one other popular podcast medium, Youtube, does.

BBC research, previously reported by Press Gazette, has suggested that approximately one-third of podcast consumers prefer to watch their podcasts than listen to them — something reflected in the popularity of so-called “vodcasts” like The Joe Rogan Experience.

The profile and tastes of these video podcast listeners likely differ in some regards from audio-only podcast consumers, and not all podcasts are published to Youtube. However, because the data is public, it is possible to see how those podcasts that do publish to the video platform fare in relation to one another.

If you have any other podcast listener data to share, let us know at bron.maher@pressgazette.co.uk.

The data shows that on Youtube, too, The Rest is Politics was the most popular UK politics podcast of the election, garnering more than 4.2 million views on podcasts uploaded between the date the election was called and Wednesday 17 June. (Press Gazette has refreshed the above chart twice after publishers requested inclusion. First, the day after publication, to add four additional podcasts: Channel 4's Political Fourcast, Joe Media Group's Politics Joe, Crooked Media's Pod Save the UK and IFS Zooms in from the Institute for Fiscal Studies; second, on 22 July, to add TLDR News' podcast and Novara Media's Novara Live.)

Illustrating the extent to which vodcast and podcast audiences can differ, the second most popular political podcast was that of The New Statesman, which received 3.2 million views. On Spotify and Apple Podcasts The New Statesman Podcast ranks 34th and 32nd respectively at time of writing. (Similarly Politics Joe, which is 71st on Apple, and 29th on Spotify, is fourth on Youtube, and Channel 4's Fourcast, which is second place on Youtube, comes in at 159th on Apple and does not rank at all on Spotify's 50-strong leaderboard.)

The New Statesman (a sister title of Press Gazette) told us after the publication of this story that across all its Youtube content, regardless of publication date, it received 5,212,722 views between 23 May and 18 July. Although we excluded shortform Youtube Shorts from this analysis, the NS channel's Shorts published since 23 May have received 1,484,157 views.

The News Agents was third-ranked among the Youtube podcasts, nearing two million views.

It is also possible to plot how podcast releases performed.

Most podcast publishers on Youtube use the medium to host both their audio products and their general video content. But for the handful of publishers on the above list that mainly use their Youtube channels to host their podcast, it is possible to see use the platform's publicly-available channel subscriber figures to see how subscriptions to certain podcasts on Youtube grew over the election.

Acast's Shetabi told Press Gazette the growth across podcasts during the election showed the market still has plenty of space for new entrants

“The audience size is only growing," he said.

"The election period proved that — all of these shows grew to some extent because people were discovering new shows and new perspective, new angles... You're not going to say that two of these shows in the top 20 news and politics podcasts are the same."

Additional reporting by Amy Seal and Juliana Pamiloza.

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