Taskmaster The Podcast and Taskmaster: The People’s Podcast are both created and produced by Avalon, producers of the multi-award winning, global hit TV series

21 March 2024: Global, the Media & Entertainment group, has announced that DAX, its market-leading digital advertising exchange, will be the exclusive advertising partner for the official Taskmaster hit podcasts – Taskmaster The Podcast and Taskmaster: The People’s Podcast – produced by Avalon, the production company behind the BAFTA and National Comedy award winning, International Emmy nominated global phenomenon and smash hit comedy series on Channel 4.

Both podcasts will be added to DAX, providing a platform for advertisers to run targeted audio campaigns via host-read and spot ads.

Taskmaster: The Podcast is hosted by critically acclaimed stand-up comedian and former Taskmaster champion Ed Gamble. He is joined each week by a special guest to discuss and dissect the latest episode of the show after it has aired on Channel 4.

Taskmaster: The People’s Podcast is the official fan podcast, hosted by comedian, actress and star of series 15, Jenny Eclair, alongside comedy writer and Taskmaster aficionado Jack Bernhardt. Together, Jenny and Jack take a deep dive into the world of Taskmaster, talking to behind-the-scenes guests, superfans and some of the most beloved characters from the show.

Since launching in 2020, Taskmaster: The Podcast has had 30 million downloads and 200,000 listeners tune in every week. In 2023, Taskmaster triumphed as one of Channel 4’s most popular programmes, coming in as the channel’s third most streamed title with 2.3 billion viewing minutes recorded. The show regularly attracts over two million consolidated viewers and is loved by viewers and critics alike in the UK and in the 94 countries around the world where the British version of the show is broadcast.

Sarah Ray, Head of Podcast Sales at Global said: “As our recent research revealed, almost half of the UK say they listen to a comedy podcast every day, and many describe it as their ‘go-to’ genre. With that in mind, I’m thrilled that we’re now able to offer our advertising partners access to two of the funniest podcasts out there, and three hilarious hosts.”

DAX is a pioneering digital advertising exchange that connects brands with audiences at scale through music, radio and podcasts. Advertisers on DAX can reach audiences with the support of smart targeting and award-winning effectiveness tools. Premium publishers and podcasts on DAX include iHeart, SoundCloud, Sky, ITV, The Athletic and all of Global’s radio and podcast brands including Capital, Heart, The News Agents and My Therapist Ghosted Me.

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For more information, please contact:

Ali Laurie – Senior Communications Manager, Global – [email protected]

Florrie Sheehan – Publicity Manager, Avalon – [email protected]

About Global

Global is one of the world’s leading Media & Entertainment groups. With a huge weekly reach, it is the UK and Europe’s largest Radio & Outdoor company.

Global is home to respected, national, market leading media brands including Capital, Heart, Classic FM, LBC, Global’s Newsroom, Smooth, Radio X, Capital XTRA, Gold and Global Player, which allows listeners to enjoy all of Global’s radio brands, award-winning podcasts, and expertly-curated playlists, in one place in app, on web and on smart speakers.

With an extensive and diverse portfolio, Global is also the leading Outdoor company in the UK & one of the largest in Europe with over 235,000 sites reaching 95% of the UK population.

On-air, on Global Player and with our outdoor platforms combined, Global reaches 51 million individuals across the UK every week, including 26.6 million on the radio alone.

Global created and operates DAX, the market leader in Digital audio advertising. Through its proprietary technology, DAX connects advertisers with an audience of more than 130 million people worldwide, inserting targeted advertising into music streaming services, connected radio listening and podcasts in the UK, Europe, the USA and Canada. DAX is the largest digital audio advertising platform in the UK and one of the largest in the world.

The company headquarters is in London’s iconic Leicester Square. Ashley Tabor-King CBE is Founder & Executive President, Stephen Miron is Group CEO, Lord Allen is Chairman and James Rea is Chief Broadcasting and Content Officer. Ashley Tabor-King created Global in 2007.

www.global.com

@global

About Avalon

Avalon is a multi-award-winning talent management, television production and live promotion group with offices in London, Los Angeles and New York. Avalon, Artists Rights Group and The Agency together represent a diverse and distinctive roster of artists including actors, comedians, writers and directors, among them Academy Award, BAFTA, Emmy, Tony and Olivier Award-winners.

Avalon is the UK’s largest true independent television production company, with over 40 shows in production in the last year including: hit entertainment format Taskmaster (Channel 4 in the UK, Network 10 in Australia, TV4 in Sweden, TVNorge/Discovery+ in Norway); Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO); Starstruck (HBO Max/BBC); Not Going Out (BBC), the UK’s longest running sitcom on air; Breeders (FX/Sky); The Chris & Rosie Ramsey Show (BBC); and Fantasy Football League (Sky). Avalon has produced over 4,000 episodes of hit programming for audiences in the UK, US and around the world, winning over 30 Emmy Awards and BAFTAs from nearly 100 nominations.

Other landmark Avalon shows include Catastrophe (Amazon/Channel 4), Flatbush Misdemeanors (Showtime), The Russell Howard Hour (Sky), TV Burp (ITV), and the cult classic workplace sitcom Workaholics (Comedy Central). Avalon has also produced over 60 comedy specials for various platforms including Amazon, HBO and Netflix, as well as numerous podcasts and radio shows, including the UK’s biggest podcast Shagged. Married. Annoyed. with Chris & Rosie Ramsey. Avalon’s dedicated distribution arm licenses its catalogue of programmes and formats to over 200 territories worldwide.

Avalon produces many successful podcasts including: Sh**ged Married Annoyed; The Political Party with Matt Forde; Taskmaster The Podcast hosted by Ed Gamble, Taskmaster: The Peoples Podcast hosted by Jenny Eclair; and represents podcast creators and hosts from shows including: Richard Herring’s Leicester Square Theatre Podcast (RHLSTP); Off Menu; WTF with Marc Maron; How to Citizen with Baratunde Thurston; The Bugle; and This Is Important with Blake Anderson, Adam Devine, Anders Holm and Kyle Newacheck.

Avalon also produces and promotes live comedy around the world and has promoted more winners and nominees of the prestigious Edinburgh Comedy Award than any other company. Avalon produced Newman and Baddiel: Live at Wembley, the UK’s first arena comedy show, Jerry Springer: The Opera, winner of four Olivier Awards, and is currently producing Operation Mincemeat: A New Musical in the West End.

For Avalon news visit: www.avalonuk.com/press or follow @avalonent

About Taskmaster:

• Taskmaster is a BAFTA winning and International Emmy nominated comedy entertainment show originally created by Alex Horne. Greg Davies stars as the all-powerful “Taskmaster” who, with the help of his loyal assistant Horne, sets out to test the wiles, wit and wisdom of five comedians through a series of strange and surreal challenges in what is the most hard-fought and ridiculous comedy entertainment format on TV.

• 159 episodes have been produced in the UK so far, as part of a landmark six season deal with Channel 4 in 2020, which has recently been renewed for a further six series by the broadcaster following nine record-breaking series on UKTV’s Dave.

• Over the past year, Taskmaster triumphed as one of Channel 4’s most popular programmes, coming in as the channel’s third most streamed title of the year with 2.3 billion viewing minutes recorded across all series watched in 2023. The launch episode of series 15 alone has had 85.4million streaming minutes viewed so far. Previously, the show enjoyed its best performance on record with its Channel 4 launch which reached 3.9 million consolidated views after the first episode, winning the majority share of young viewers 16 – 34’s and making it the best-performing new entertainment show of the year (Broadcast, 2020). Watched by a broad multi-generational audience, it was Channel 4’s youngest skewing series last year, and in terms of audience share of young viewers (16-34) it is in the top three in the coveted 9pm slot, with Gogglebox and Derry Girls. Taskmaster is also hugely popular on All 4, where it is available for free and, since 2021, the average views per episode [0-7Days, O+O] have grown for the title with each series. Since the programme’s initial launch in 2015 on UKTV’s Dave, Taskmaster’s audience has grown by 80% from series one to series nine.

• Taskmaster was crowned Best Comedy Entertainment Show at the National Comedy Awards 2022 and 2023, Best Comedy Entertainment at the BAFTAs 2020 and won Best Entertainment Programme at the Broadcast Awards 2018, having previously received two more nominations for the Broadcast Awards and recently picking up its third BAFTA nomination for the 2023 ceremony. It has also been nominated for the Bruce Forsyth Entertainment Award at the NTA’s 2021 and 2022, Best Comedy Entertainment at Rose d’Or 2023, Studio Entertainment at Rose d’Or 2021, Best Entertainment Programme at the RTS Awards, Broadcasting Press Guild Awards, the Broadcast Digital Awards, Edinburgh TV Award, the TV Choice Awards, and Best Returning Format in the International Format Awards 2020.

• The original Taskmaster programme has been sold to 94 countries and aired on The CW in the U.S. in 2020.

• Over 61 seasons and 560 episodes have been commissioned outside the UK with local versions now in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the Nordics, Croatia and Portugal where it ranked first for most watched entertainment programs on its channel RTP 1. Taskmaster Australia launched on Channel 10 where it became the channel’s top new show of the year and received a nomination for Most Outstanding Comedy at the Logies, produced by Avalon Television with Kevin&Co and featuring Tom Gleeson as the Taskmaster with Tom Cashman as the Taskmaster’s Assistant, and Taskmaster New Zealand has received funding for a fourth season from New Zealand On Air to play on TVNZ and TVNZ+ in 2023, while it won Best Entertainment Show at eh NZ TV Awards for this third series. The first season of Le Maitre du Jeu for Bell Media, which aired in Canada in September 2022, increased Noovo’s performance in the Thursday time slot by 50%, while the UK original won Canada’s film and TV Rockie Awards 2023 for best Comedy and Variety show.

• The format has seen huge success in Europe, with the Swedish version reaching ratings of over a 50% market share in a primetime weekend slot on SVT and now in its seventh series. Norway’s original version of Taskmaster, Kongen Befaler, won the Norwegian TV Academy Award (Gullruten) for Best Entertainment Show in 2022, where an eighth season is in production for Discovery. Finland’s version of Taskmaster, Suurmestari, won Game Show of the Year at the Venla Gaala awards, with a fourth series ordered by MTV, and Stormester, Denmark’s Taskmaster, which is now in its seventh series, won Best Game Show at the 2022 Vindere Awards, with TV2 commissioning a ‘Champion of Champions’ series for 2023.

• The Taskmaster YouTube channel has seen huge success internationally, reaching over 9.5 billion impressions since it first launched in October 2019, with just over 685 million views and over 1.4 million subscribers, of which over a third are from North America. The channel has had over 157 million hours’ worth of content viewed with 54% of those hours from North America (85 million hours watched). The show has grown significantly in popularity with American audiences and over the last year there have been a total of 107 million views.

• The Taskmaster book ‘200 Extraordinary Tasks for Ordinary People’ was published in 2018, while a second book ‘Bring Me The Head of the Taskmaster’ was published in September 2021 and combined they have sold 180,000 copies to date. Both books featured as Sunday Times Bestsellers at launch. The Swedish version of the book has sold 108,000 copies to date.

• For the first time, Taskmaster is entering the world of virtual reality with the brand new upcoming virtual reality game, Taskmaster VR. Published by Scallywag Arcade, a Draw & Code studio, Taskmaster VR is set to launch in 2024 for Meta Quest 2 and 3.

• The festive season saw the launch of brand-new Taskmaster Crackers which entirely sold out before they hit the shelves at pre-sale. Having currently sold over a quarter of a million crackers to fans across the world, production has gone into overdrive to meet phenomenal demand in time for Christmas. They are currently on sale and can be found on the Taskmaster Store as well as Amazon where they became an official No.1 best-seller and have been ordered by fans across 58 countries around the globe including in North America, Australia, Thailand, South Korea and Iceland among other countries.

• A Taskmaster boardgame was released in Autumn 2019 and entirely sold out a week after it went on sale. It has sold over 250,000 copies to date along with an expansion pack. A second game, Taskmaster The Secret Series Game was released in 2022. Taskmaster The Card Game was released in September 2022 and has sold over 70,000 copies to date. All the games are available to buy from the official Taskmaster shop, www.TaskmasterStore.com.

• Taskmaster Education takes elements of the show and uses them to inspire, engage and teach children and young people. Tasks can be adapted to meet a near infinite range of teacher objectives, whether curriculum-based or more focused on social and emotional development. Taskmaster Club launched in September 2023, offering schools across the country the opportunity to host after school clubs that bring Little Alex Horne and the silly joy of Taskmaster into their classrooms. Over 800 schools in the UK have registered to date on com.

• Taskmaster is working with Homeless Link; the national membership charity for frontline homelessness services, creating a virtual Taskmaster at Home event with all the money raised going to homeless charities across the UK. Having raised over £125,000, more information on the virtual event can be found here.

• The launch of series 13 also saw the unveiling of the brand new Taskmaster App; a show companion where viewers can watch the show on TV and score along at home, taking on the role of the mighty Taskmaster themselves. The app also features the Taskmaster Academy with quizzes from every series of the show, group and solo tasking games, and a Jukebox featuring all of the music from the show.

Taskmaster can be watched on:
TaskmasterSuperMax+
Channel 4 / All 4
Taskmaster YouTube Channel
iTunes
Google
Amazon
Microsoft