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The family tree of football podcasting

Where did all the football podcasts come from?

We read the show notes of 59,142 episodes across 120 podcasts and followed the hosts and guests as they moved between them. It turns out almost everything comes from two podcasts launched a month apart in 2006: the Guardian's World Cup Show (which became Football Weekly) and The Times' The Game. Between them they account for 61 of the 112 shows whose founders we could identify (54%) — and 34 shows descend from both.

120

podcasts mapped

59,142

episodes read

49

descend from the Guardian line

44

descend from The Times' The Game

Loading the family tree…

Where it began

  1. May 2006

    The World Cup Show (The Guardian, 2006)

    Presented by James Richardson, Barry Glendenning and Sean Ingle, 36 episodes around the 2006 World Cup.

  2. Aug 2006

    Football Weekly (The Guardian)

    The same team carries on as a weekly show. 2,290 episodes later it is still going — and its regulars have gone on to found or front 28 other shows directly.

  3. Sep 2006 — a month later

    The Game (The Times football podcast)

    The Times launches its own show with Danny Kelly, Gabriele Marcotti, Guillem Balague and Kevin Day. None of them had been on the Guardian shows, so it starts a second family — 44 later shows descend from it, 34 of them from both lines.

  4. Football Weekly's direct descendants

    See all 28 →

Biggest families

Most travelled

All people →

Lineage only counts strong links — a founder hosted, or was a regular on, the earlier show. How this works is explained on the about page. Data for Football Weekly (The Guardian) goes back to 2006; some shows' earliest years are missing from their feeds.