Gary Lineker, the culture wars and why his BBC exit became a sad inevitability

The proposed separation had once felt fitting.

Forty summers after Gary Lineker had become a national goalscoring hero with England at the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, the 2026 finals in the same country — as well as co-hosts the U.S. and Canada — were to be his farewell to the BBC.

There would be games to cover in Monterrey, the city where Lineker’s hat-trick against Poland took place, and in Mexico City, where his sixth goal of the tournament proved only enough for the Golden Boot as England were beaten by Diego Maradona’s Argentina in the quarter-finals.

All that before the chance to sign off by anchoring coverage of the final.

This pre-arranged parting, announced last November, was meant to suit Lineker and the BBC after 26 years wedded together but a relationship strained to breaking point by his airing of political opinions will now not stretch that far.

Next Sunday’s episode of Match of the Day, rounding up highlights of this Premier League season’s final round of games, will mark the end of a bumpy road. The BBC’s flagship football programme had already opted to move on from its long-time presenter next season but will now also look elsewhere for the face of its World Cup coverage.

Confirmation came on Monday lunchtime with a statement from the BBC.

There were thanks for Lineker’s contributions from the BBC’s director general Tim Davie but also the acceptance that there could be no reconciliation this time. Lineker called it the “responsible course of action” to step back from his presenting duties once next weekend was over.

The prompt for this abrupt and rather unflattering end was, inevitably, a social media post. Lineker shared content from the group Palestine Lobby through his Instagram account last Tuesday, with a video captioned “Zionism explained in two minutes”. It included an illustration of a rat, often used as antisemitic insult with its roots in Nazi Germany.

Lineker subsequently deleted the post and offered his “unreserved” apologies. “I would never knowingly share anything antisemitic,” he added, but it was not enough to placate those calling for his immediate removal. Among them was the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA), which called Lineker’s position with the BBC “untenable”.

And so it proved. The BBC’s own news reporting used the same term on Sunday night as it preempted his exit the following day. Enough, it was clear, was enough.

Lineker has increasingly become the political activist that the BBC really did not want. For all he offered experience, familiarity and a slick presenting style, his enthusiasm in expressing his views on divisive issues from immigration to the war in Gaza have made him a lightning rod in the UK’s culture wars.

It also made him everything the BBC wished not to be: a threat to its reputation for rigorous impartiality.

Britain’s biggest public service broadcaster occupies a unique place in the nation’s cultural landscape. Its primary source of funding is not commercial advertisers, like its rivals ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5, but a ‘licence fee’ paid by UK households, currently £174.50 ($233.50) per year.

The idea is that this enshrines BBC neutrality, and that it is not in hock to third-party commercial entities or political groups. The flip side is that it ensures the corporation receives a particularly intense level of scrutiny and criticism, often from sections of the UK’s print media who have long been antagonised by the BBC’s access to large sums of public money. The corporation’s rules, updated in 2020, state that its employees must fall in line with what it considers its responsibility to maintain impartiality.

It all means that whenever that impartiality is called into question, a storm erupts — which brings us back to Lineker.

The 64-year-old was suspended from his post two years ago after a social media post likened the former Conservative government’s asylum policy to “that used by (Nazi) Germany in the ’30s”.

That was ruled to have breached the BBC’s impartiality guidelines but led to Lineker’s colleagues, including fellow former England internationals Alan Shearer and Ian Wright, boycotting the channel’s football output in solidarity. Match of the Day was broadcast with no presenters, pundits or commentators for one night only in March 2023 before a resolution was eventually found to bring about Lineker’s return.

Lineker has been the BBC’s highest-paid employee, receiving £1.35million ($1.79m) in 2023-24, but the furore around his behaviour brought about that 2020 tightening in the corporation’s rules, with all figures, not just those involved in news and current affairs, told not to “express a personal opinion on matters of public policy, politics, or controversial subjects”.

That, in effect, was the beginning of the end for Lineker at the BBC, and last November brought the confirmation he would begin a long goodbye which would conclude at that 2026 World Cup final, a moment he said felt like “the right time” to step away.

Only perhaps not like this. Lineker’s early exit will now come under a cloud and taint the presenting legacy he has crafted since first taking the Match of the Day seat from the much-loved Des Lynam at the start of the 1999-2000 Premier League season.

“The outstanding sports presenter of his time” is how the former BBC director general Greg Dyke described Lineker to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme six months ago, and he certainly compiled an impressive body of work.

His on-screen style was smooth and, ironically, given the way his BBC career has ended, uncontroversial, preferring to let his pundits sound off on the game’s big issues. His appearance wearing just a pair of Leicester City-branded underpants on the first day of the 2016-17 season — he had vowed to go through with the stunt the previous season if Leicester, his boyhood club, managed to pull off the most unlikely league title win of the modern era — was a rare example of a memorable on-air moment.

Lineker makes good on his Leicester City bet (BBC Sport)

The pity is in an unsavoury parting. Lineker saw the good in projecting his political views to a social media following that ran into the millions but the posts ultimately became his downfall. Davie said last week that mistakes “cost” the BBC, and the same has applied to Lineker.

Will Lineker, a former England captain, lose sleep over it? Only he can say. In truth, he had already ceased to need the BBC as he used to, certainly from a financial perspective.

He co-founded the production company Goalhanger — the name a nod to his penalty-box prowess as a player — initially to make documentary films but then, in 2018, expanding it to podcasts. It is now the biggest independent podcast producer outside the U.S., with its stable of ‘The Rest Is…’ shows covering areas such as history, politics and entertainment as well as football. Goalhanger’s website says its podcasts drew in 400million listens across 2024.

Lineker has already suggested that TV work would no longer be for him before the latest storm broke, with his focus pivoting to podcasts and a life away from the scrutiny he has encountered at the BBC.

“A defining voice in football coverage for the BBC for over two decades,” said Davie in the statement that accompanied confirmation of a premature exit.

It was Lineker’s voice being heard on other issues, though, that has resulted in an end unbefitting a stellar broadcasting career.

(Top photo: Tom Dulat/Getty Images for Premier League)

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