Second Captains

Richard Hillman wrote: »

They'll have a little bit of football on these extra pods, then it will be just filler of Rugby and GAA. Plus their unchallenged political beliefs, all for an extra €5 a month.

You seem to have it all sussed!

A buddy of mine was telling me about some paid for podcasts he listened to (gaming ones), he was able to add them to his podcatcher using customised RSS (using his username & password I think) - wonder if that's an option?

If they have it via website/etc, seems like a step backwards. Maybe they'll aim to have an app at some point?

€5 a month is feck all really. Only thing is I don't always get through their 4 shows a week as it is so will I even have the time to listen to the extra shows. Don't know yet.

jaykay74 wrote: »

Some mention of it being driven by subscribers so they must have some polling element for the content. I guess football will be a big vote winner!

I think the football pods do far bigger numbers than the all sport shows so I'd imagine there will be lots of footy content.

threein99 wrote:

Daily podcasts where you pay a fiver for access. Calling it Second Captains World Service. They will still be doing the Monday/Thursday ones for free.

Patww79 wrote:

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Patww79 wrote:

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Think Pat is right. Free content limited to 2 on Monday. Tues - Fri is premium content

I'll be signing up anyway. Would obviously prefer if they had found a new sponsor and the pods continued to be free, but don't mind paying a small fee for their content.
If anyone is on the fence trying to decide whether it's worth it to them to sign up for the extra content, bear in mind that if the subscription uptake is poor, chances are there'd be no more free shows either.

I always said if I ever saw any of them out and about I'd send over a pint to them. Now I won't, but I will give them a fiver for the pods. Hope whatever app they are going to force me to use is decent.

I have reservations about this tbh.

• If you don't pay, you're losing two shows a week.
• If you don't pay, you lose out on two thirds of their content.
• The show is heavily driven by the relationship between the lads, and injokes often develop and bed in. My concern is that listening to the Monday shows will now sound disjointed.
• They're hugely segmenting the audience.

I would have preferred them to maintain the 4 free shows a week and introduce 3 premium shows a week, focused on long-form interviews or really niche stories. Append segments of these pods to the end of the free shows as a "Here's what you're missing!" thing.

I'm totally OK with paying for podcasts, but I much favour the Patreon model which has proven very, very successful for a tonne of creators. Make it feel like your listeners are supporting your work as opposed to buying content.


I'll subscribe for the first month and reassess. If there isn't an RSS option, I'll probably unsubscribe because if I actively have to seek out the episodes I will likely fall well behind and end up not bothering.

Worth subscribing for a month or two to try it out. The Anfield Wrap podcast has a similar model of a couple of free shows and paid shows for the rest. They seem to be doing well out of it.

Brock Turnpike wrote: »

Will definitely be signing up. Daily podcast gives them a chance to react to stuff as it happens. This is one thing that's sorely lacking when they are only releasing pods twice a week.

I've been lacking in pods at times and this will definitely fill the gap. Great for listening to when going out for a run.

That's what I'm thinking. Being able to react to whatever happened the night before will be great.

No qualms paying for this. €5 a month for 20+ hrs of content is worth it for me. I spend twice that on Netflix and might watch one or two films a month on it.

With declining ad revenues, publishers are facing a reckoning, and I'm more than happy to shell out a few quid a month to the outlets that provide high-quality, relevant content.