Business of MediaPodcastsAnalysis

Goalhanger’s Growth Playbook: How Much Is a Loyal Sub Worth in 2026?

tthemovies

2026-01-30

10 min read

Model Goalhanger’s £15m case: compute subscriber value, churn impact, LTV, CAC payback and realistic paid subscription targets for creators in 2026.

Hook: If you run a podcast or niche entertainment brand, one question drives every growth meeting — how much is a loyal subscriber actually worth?

Fragmented platforms, subscription fatigue, and rising acquisition costs make it hard to answer that simply. In 2026, creators and small networks need a numbers-first playbook: a clear way to model Goalhanger revenue (they’re a leading data point after a big 2026 milestone), compute subscriber value, simulate the impact of different churn rates, and decide realistic targets for paid subscribers.

Executive summary — the headline numbers you need right now

Goalhanger hit a key milestone in early 2026: more than 250,000 paying subscribers across its network, with an average subscriber paying about £60 per year. That math produces roughly £15m in annual subscriber income (Press Gazette, Jan 2026).

“Goalhanger now has more than 250,000 paying subscribers… The average subscriber pays £60 per year… This equates to annual subscriber income of around £15m per year.” — Press Gazette (Jan 2026)

That single data point is powerful because it anchors an entire economics model you can adapt to any niche entertainment brand. Below I break down the formulas, run three practical scenarios, and offer an actionable retention-and-growth playbook you can copy.

The math: core formulas every creator should own

Keep these formulas in your head (or paste into a simple spreadsheet). I use annual ARPU (average revenue per user) = total subscription revenue ÷ paying subscribers. For Goalhanger: £15,000,000 ÷ 250,000 = £60 ARPU / year.

Monthly ARPU

Monthly ARPU = annual ARPU ÷ 12. For £60/yr subscribers: £5 / month.

Lifetime value (LTV)

Two common, practical LTV formulae (pick one and stay consistent):

Annual method: LTV = annual ARPU ÷ annual churn rate (express churn as a decimal). E.g., annual churn 25% → LTV = £60 ÷ 0.25 = £240.
Monthly method: LTV = monthly ARPU ÷ monthly churn. Convert annual churn to monthly churn using m = 1 − (1 − a)^(1/12) if you need precision.

Customer acquisition payback

Months to payback = CAC ÷ monthly ARPU. Example: CAC £20 ÷ £5 = 4 months. This is the single most useful sanity check when you run paid marketing campaigns.

Net lifetime margin

Start with LTV, subtract platform fees, payment processing, hosting & production per sub, and amortized CAC. That gives you the realistic money you can reinvest in growth.

Goalhanger: a living case study and why it matters to niche creators

Use the Goalhanger headline as your anchor. They’re a multi-show network (The Rest Is Politics, The Rest Is History and others) that converts a substantial owned audience into subscriptions. The company’s product mix (ad‑free listening, early access, bonus content, live ticket access and Discord communities) illustrates the retention levers that matter in 2026.

Key public numbers:

Subscribers: 250,000+
Average price: £60 / year
Result: ~£15m annual subscription revenue

These figures are useful because they make per-subscriber math concrete. If you run a single show with 50k monthly listeners, Goalhanger’s scale is instructive but not required—similar economics apply at smaller scales when you control the audience and product.

Three churn scenarios: turning small changes into large financial outcomes

Churn is the silent growth killer. Below I show LTV at three realistic annual churn rates for podcast memberships in 2026: low (15%), medium (25%), and high (40%). Use these to stress-test your plans.

Low churn — 15%
- Annual LTV = £60 ÷ 0.15 = £400
- Monthly churn ≈ 1.36%
Medium churn — 25%
- Annual LTV = £60 ÷ 0.25 = £240
- Monthly churn ≈ 2.37%
High churn — 40%
- Annual LTV = £60 ÷ 0.40 = £150
- Monthly churn ≈ 4.20%

Translation: lowering annual churn from 40% to 25% (a realistic retention program) increases LTV from £150 to £240 — a 60% uplift. That’s often more valuable than halving your CAC with paid channels.

Modeling growth targets: how many listeners to hit X paid subscribers?

Most creators need a conversion funnel to translate audience size into paid subscribers. Start with these inputs: monthly active audience (MAA), conversion rate to paid (c), and churn (a). Pay subscribers = MAA × c.

Common conversion benchmarks (2026):

Low engagement, general podcast: 0.5%–1%
Well-engaged niche audience: 1%–3%
Super-engaged, show-native community: 3%–8%+

Examples:

If you have 100,000 monthly listeners and convert at 1% → 1,000 paid subs → at £60/yr = £60k/yr.
Convert 3% on the same audience → 3,000 subs → £180k/yr.
To match Goalhanger’s 250k paying subs with a 2% conversion, you’d need ~12.5 million monthly listeners across your network (which explains why Goalhanger is a network play).

Where the real profit comes from — net LTV after platform fees and CAC

Gross ARPU is a start. For creators you must subtract real costs to find net subscriber value:

Platform fee (if you use Apple, Stripe, or platform-hosted subscriptions): typically 15–30%, depending on platform and contract.
Payment processing: ~2–3% + small fixed fee per transaction.
Hosting & production allocation: depends on scale — assume £3–£10 / year per subscriber as a conservative range.
CAC: ranges widely. Owned-audience CAC is often £0–£10. Paid ads CAC commonly sits at £20–£60 or higher depending on creative and targeting.

Worked example (medium churn 25%):

Annual ARPU: £60
Platform fee (15%): −£9 → £51
Payment processing (3%): −£1.53 → £49.47
Hosting & production: −£6 → £43.47
LTV (gross): £240 (from earlier)
If CAC = £20, amortize CAC across the lifetime (LTV-years = 1 / 0.25 = 4 years). Annualized CAC ≈ £5/year; total lifetime CAC = £20.
Net lifetime take ≈ £240 − £20 = £220. After direct production and fees you still have a healthy margin to fund growth and creators’ pay.

Churn: the levers you can pull (2026 playbook)

Late 2025 and early 2026 accelerated two trends that directly affect churn:

Creators moved toward owning relationships (email, Discord, first‑party subscriptions) instead of purely platform‑dependent models.
AI-powered personalization improved content recommendation and in-member experiences, raising engagement baselines where implemented.

Retention levers that work in 2026:

Community-first features: Members-only Discord, live AMAs, ticket pre-sales. Goalhanger’s use of live ticket early access and live ticket early access and Discord is a textbook approach.
Exclusive serial content: multi-episode bonus series that reward long-term membership.
Annual discounts / memberships: Offer a meaningful discount for annual billing—annual payers churn less.
Onboarding & win-back flows: automated welcome sequences, retention nudges pre-cancellation, and targeted re-engagement offers.
Data-driven personalization: use consumption data to recommend bonus episodes, events, or merch to the right segments.

Practical playbook — what to test in the next 90 days

If you’re building subscription economics for a niche entertainment brand, here’s a prioritized 90-day plan:

Financial baseline: calculate your current ARPU, monthly ARPU (£/mo), and current annual churn. If you don’t track churn, start now — it’s the most important metric.
Simple LTV model: plug ARPU and churn into the formulas above. Model three scenarios (15%, 25%, 40%).
Audit acquisition channels: estimate CAC per channel. If CAC > LTV, pause or optimize immediately.
Retention experiments: implement a basic win-back flow and a quarterly members-only piece of content. Measure churn impact after 30/60/90 days.
Pricing test: add an annual plan with a 10–20% discount and track lift in ARPU and reduction in churn.
Membership features: launch one community event (e.g., quarterly live Q&A) and one members-only content series. Track engagement and retention by cohort.

Realistic subscription targets for niche brands in 2026

Not everyone will be Goalhanger, and that’s okay. Here are pragmatic targets based on audience size and conversion rates:

Emerging show (MAA 10k): at 1% conversion → 100 paid subs → ~£6k/yr. This covers some production costs and proves product-market fit.
Growing show (MAA 50k): at 2% conversion → 1,000 paid subs → ~£60k/yr. This is a viable standalone business for individual creators or a small team.
Network play (MAA 1M across shows): at 2–3% conversion → 20k–30k paid subs → £1.2–1.8m/yr. Networks multiply discovery and reduce per-show CAC.

Key takeaway: focus on improving conversion and reducing churn rather than chasing raw audience growth. A 1 percentage point rise in conversion or a 5–10 point reduction in annual churn can be worth many multiples of expensive audience growth campaigns.

Monitoring dashboard: the five metrics to track weekly

Paid subscribers (total & weekly net change)
ARPU (monthly & annual)
Churn rate (monthly & annual)
CAC by channel
LTV to CAC ratio — aim for at least 3:1 as a long-term target in paid channels

For teams building dashboards and analytics, consider production-ready approaches for storing and querying event-level subscriber activity (consumption, cancellations, promotion redemptions) — it’s the difference between reactive and proactive retention programs. See a practical example for analytics stacks: ClickHouse for scraped data and similar solutions can power weekly cohort reports and funnel visualisations.

2026 trends creators must price into models

Several macro trends in late 2025 and early 2026 should influence forecasts:

Subscription bundling & bundles marketplaces — bundling can lower price sensitivity and raise conversion if structured correctly.
Regulatory & platform shifts — payment fee policies and platform revenue sharing remain in flux; always model a 5–15% variance in platform fees.
AI for personalization and distribution — expect tools that boost discoverability inside member pools and automate retention campaigns, which can lower effective churn.
Creator-first monetization infrastructure — better first-party solutions reduce CAC and platform dependency, improving net margins.

Final verdict: what Goalhanger proves — and what you can replicate

Goalhanger’s public milestone (250k paid subs and ~£15m ARR) proves a simple truth: with a multi-show strategy, products that genuinely improve the member experience, and owned distribution, creator businesses can build subscription-grade economics.

For most niche brands, the highest leverage moves are not acquiring the next 10,000 listeners but:

Converting a higher share of your existing audience
Reducing churn with community and product improvements
Controlling CAC with owned channels and smarter paid tests

Actionable checklist — start modeling today

Plug your current subs, revenue, and churn into the LTV formulas above.
Run three scenarios (15/25/40% churn) and compute net LTV after platform fees and CAC.
Set retention experiments with measurable success criteria (e.g., reduce monthly churn from 3% → 2%).
Measure CAC per channel and stop channels where CAC > LTV.
Test an annual plan and 1–2 community features in 90 days and measure cohort retention.

Closing — your next move

Want the spreadsheet used for these scenarios? Or a custom model tuned to your audience, price tiers and expected CAC? Click through to download the free LTV & churn calculator I use for creator consultations and small podcast networks.

In a market where premium-craft podcasts and niche entertainment brands compete on product, not just reach, understanding the true value of a subscriber is the single best investment you can make. Model it, measure it, and design your product to keep customers for years — not months.

Call to action: Download the LTV calculator, run your numbers, and subscribe for a monthly briefing where we model four creator business cases every quarter. If you want a quick start, reply with your current subscribers and monthly listeners and I’ll send a tailored mini-model.

themovies

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.