It's easy to throw around stats like "80% of high-trust listeners buy." It's harder, and more useful, to show where a number like that actually comes from. This page is that receipt.

The study

The research behind Trust Capital comes from a single dissertation: "How Independent Football Podcasts Use Digital Marketing to Drive Brand Partnerships and Revenue Growth" (MSc Football Business, 2025).

Design
A positivist, quantitative study — an online questionnaire distributed via X, Instagram, WhatsApp, and email.
Sample
111 valid responses from self-identified regular football podcast listeners.
Who answered
Roughly 78% male, about half aged 18–24, mostly UK-based.
Analysis
Descriptive statistics, plus independent-samples t-tests and a one-way ANOVA testing three specific hypotheses about what drives purchase behaviour.
111
Valid responses
≈78%
Male respondents
≈50%
Aged 18–24

Mostly UK-based. Self-identified regular football podcast listeners.

Every stat on this site — the trust finding, the engagement-metrics null result, the channel-influence result — comes out of that single analysis.

What the data can tell you

The statistical tests show correlation, not causation, at a single point in time. They're strong enough to say: in this sample, trust tracked with purchase behaviour, and engagement frequency and channel choice didn't. They're not strong enough to say trust causes purchases in every case, for every podcast, forever.

That distinction matters, and we're not going to blur it just because the trust story is more compelling than the honest one.

The honest limitations

Straight talk

Where this could wobble.

Convenience sample. Respondents were reached through the researcher's own networks and social channels, which likely skews toward more engaged, online-active listeners than the average podcast fan.
Binary purchase measure. The survey asked whether someone purchased a sponsor's product, not how often or how much — so the data can't speak to purchase frequency or value.
Cross-sectional design. Everyone was surveyed once, at one moment. That rules out tracking how trust and purchasing behaviour change over time, and rules out any strict causal claim.
Self-report data. People don't always accurately recall or report their own behaviour, and answers to questions like "did you trust this brand" can be shaped by what feels like the "right" answer to give.

Why we're telling you this

A site built entirely on one study should say so plainly, not bury it in a footnote. If a stat on this site changes how you price a sponsorship or pitch a brand, you deserve to know exactly how sturdy that stat is — and where it might wobble.

That's also why Trust Capital is built to keep testing itself: every podcast that goes through certification adds a real-world data point against the original findings, instead of asking you to take a single dissertation's word for it forever.

Read the findings

Why Trust Converts→ Why Engagement Metrics Lie→ AI Behind the Mic, Not On It→

Full methodology, hypothesis tests, and statistical output available on request.