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“NEXT MONDAY 13 February, we are launching our brand new Second Captains World Service,” Eoin McDevitt announced on Monday’s installment of the popular podcast.
McDevitt, along with his colleagues Ken Early, Simon Hick, Mark Horgan and Ciarán Murphy, was delivering on a previous promise of big news.
“This will be a completely member-led, online station that gives you the chance to listen to all your favourite SC podcasts every day of the week,” he explained further.
Listeners of Second Captains will be charged €5 per month for the imminent daily installments, which will include guest presenters (former footballer and regular contributor Richie Sadlier is already confirmed), non-sports shows (Ken Early will be launching a political iteration) and immediate reaction to breaking news.
Those who don’t join will now only have access to Monday’s two shows.
Brave and ballsy were the two words being thrown around this week after the big reveal.
But that’s not exactly ringing true for the gang.
“We’re giddy with it, it’s unbelievably exciting,” director and producer Mark Horgan tells TheJournal.ie.
It’s been a while coming and it doesn’t feel like that for us. It feels right. It was the next logical step.
“We threw the dice a little a few years ago,” he adds, referencing the split from Newstalk where they presented Off the Ball.
The five-strong team spent months researching models that could work commercially for the company but also fit with their cult-like listenership.
According to Horgan, consumers are now more likely than ever to “pay for quality” but they were anxious to come up with a “fair price that wouldn’t put people off but was still competitive”.
Tight-lipped on how many of their over 200,000-plus followers they expect to get across the line, Horgan would not be drawn on their hopes or expectations.
It’s a shot in the dark for us. We feel it’s the right thing at the right time but some people, naturally, won’t come along and that’s completely cool.
To distribute its daily output, Second Captains will be using Patreon – a platform which allows “creators” to earn “sustainable income, directly from fans”. In return, it takes five percent of successfully processed payments.
“It has been proven to be successful for [shows with] dedicated followings,” continues Horgan, noting they took inspiration from US political podcast Chapo Trap House. Charging $5 per month, it now has more than 9,000 subscribers.
Fans of Second Captains like being in on the joke. They know what the deal is with the ‘You’re amazing’ sign-off, delight in Planet Earth references and can tell their Rashers Geraghty from their Black Puddin’ O’Toole.
So will people tune in to keep up with the story? The Coronation Street of podcasts?
Horgan insists there’ll be no cliffhangers or ‘tricks’ to get people in as signed-up members.
“The shows will be the same,” he says.
It’ll be what people are used to. We’ll be putting out really good shows as often as we can.
There will be benefits for paying customers though, including an induction pack (complete with an Early original doodle), advance notice of tickets for live shows, discounts on annuals and what will likely become much-coveted badges.
There are risks with paywalls – a quick google of ‘how to make money from a podcast?’ will highlight the dilemma of trying to get people to fork out cash for something they’re used to getting for free.
The company, however, has other revenue streams from sponsored live shows (a December event sold out within hours) and work with RTÉ Radio One during the summer months. With a mobile studio, it also has the ability to be flexible and vary its own production company model.
Making the announcement, McDevitt emphasised the importance of becoming an independent broadcaster, saying they are ready to “try a different way of doing things”.
Breaking from a four-year relationship with the Irish Times, Horgan says Second Captains – as a production company – now has to stand on its own, a prospect he is relishing.
“We’ve had a really good relationship with the Times. They’ve been behind us since we joined them. [The five of us] have been working together since 2004… [we're] doing this for a long time. We’ve been able to build up the elements of Second Captains.
“We’ve built the infrastructure, we have the studio. There comes a time when you have to be ambitious for yourself – without needing a separate media company or a wealthy backer. We don’t need the support of something else now.”
Except their dedicated listeners. And they’re willing to bet on them.
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Best of luck to them. Im quite sceptical on how they’ll make enough revenue. Cant see enough people paying a fiver per month to support all the team. They’ll have to look at advertising.
I have 5 or 6 podcasts that I really enjoy, this being one of them. If I was to pay €5 for each of them that would be €30 per month. Best of luck to them but I’ve enough bills at the minute.
Loved the lads when they were on off the ball….but second captains is not sharp enough for me…I live in England …listen to off the ball daily and colm p weekly….find SC too drawn out and a bit plain TBH…hope this helps
Christ the comments are negative. Fair play to em, in my opinion the best sports broadcasters in the country. I hope they get 100000 subscribers on Monday and I’ll happily give them my 5iver. More power to them.
@Paul McMahon: Agree x 5!
I’ll be happy to pay €5 a month. The media at the moment is at a crossroads where we may decide to pay for unbiased quality or we instead get free click bait and biased news. Without wanting to be dramatic this could be an important turning point for media that we are once again willing to pay for quality and independence and can help stop fake news/advertorials/sponsors and benefactors bias etc. Also these guys have given us loads of great podcasts in the past for free and I’m happy to support them now.
I doubt if even their own mothers would cough up €60 a year to listen to this lot. People can stream their own content free online so this is a stupid idea and won’t work.
Too much free media of all guises available online now to justify a paywall for a sports show. I’ve always listened to them but I won’t be paying.
Wouldn’t pay a cent to listen to those egotistical clowns
We don’t often broadcast the stuff that comes from s*um around the country
Hey hey hey, cheap shot, cheap shot, cheap shot, cheap shot
Yep, like Soccer AM. Shite
I’ve been a massive fan since the radio show and love the pod, but I find they have gotten very snobbish in the last year or so in alot of their coverage especially towards UFC and mcgregor and his fan’s. They can be very bias .difficult decision to follow them and pay,I fear we may be drifting apart.
No way will this take off!!, I wish them all the luck but in my opinion off the ball improved if anything when they left
Ah now come on, off the ball is way worse, don’t listen to it anymore
Anyone else annoyed with the constant plugging of the annual before Christmas? It seemed to take up a fair bit of each podcast in December. Was always plugged tongue in cheek, but when it’s every single podcast it becomes very tedious. Dropped it my from Christmas shopping list because of this.
Best of luck to them It’s a tough market place thou and I for one won’t sign up for football there are plenty of free The football ramble The gaurdian football weekly and the times game podcast are all twice a week and free I’m not interested enough in gaa to want listen to a podcast about it and I could care less for a ken early political show but still best of luck to them It’s a tough market place but I think they will get 50,000 subs to start with and content will then determine where it goes from there
Very play to the lads this is ballsy to say the least I hope it works out for them. I think I will pay for the service however I feel they were better off when they were working on off the ball and reacting to sports news as it happened maybe with this they will be able to react and comment on stories more quickly. As for off the ball I listen to them also the show is fine what gets me is the fake banter between the lads. However the Cathal mccarron and lance armstrong interviews were two of best pieces of radio I listen to last year Brit
Off the ball is gone down hill since the boy parkinson left
The effort of finding an illegal streaimg site again for this
Can’t imagine there is much of a market for illegal podcast streaming is there?
Ken is great on light subjects like sports but is absolutely brutal on politics, his Trump coverage bordered on childish especially since it was so obvious that he took great personal offense at the argument put forward by the likes of Glen Greenwald that the liberal media played a part in turning the public towards Trump. Not that he ever formed a cogent argument against this viewpoint, he just took constant snarky sarcastic swipes at the suggestion. You couldn’t pay me enough money to listen to his pompous biased political ramblings once a week.
I enjoyed them on off the ball & was gutted when they left. To be fair off the ball has gone from strength to strength and second captains just isn’t as good. Always seem to be going off on a tangent most led by Ken Earley. I ll listen to the free ones but I would not pay to listen to them. I do think that Eoin Mc Devitt is a great broadcaster and host of the show.
I’ll stick with Joe Rogan’s podcasts that done charge.
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