Newstalk: Off The Ball

well here’s a guaranteed tenner a month for the lads safe to say.

You see your last line. You have just admitted you are wrong. OTB rubbished the report and wouldn't have a bad word said about Pauw. That's what happened. What happened in the Athletic is irrelevant to how OTB went about it.

From the SBP piece

"According to the latest JNLR figures, which solely cover radio listenership, Off the Ball’s weeknight show had 48,000 listeners and 283,000 on weekends."

And there you are listening to the free Arsecast with Ken Early😁😁

Yawn all you want. You literally use every post in here to defend everything OTB does. No criticism is allowed of OTB going by your posts.

I have no problem with people providing feedback positive or negative. I'm not here for any perceived "bitchfest". My post wasn't challenged either. It was someone else who criticised them to which you responded. And I asked a perfectly reasonable question as to why you're always defending any criticism of them.

Crappy quiz is probably my fav segment to be honest ,plus Wednesday night rugby once its not Fiona Hayes doing it, wow she is painful.

Yes, the stupid headwrecking buzz is still there.

Not to get Saipan about it but weren’t the second captains lad pretty much sacked on the spot after trying to put it up to fathead [REDACTED] O’Brein? Thought they gave him some kind of ultimatum about broadcasting times and/or money and the he/station told them to piss off as opposed to abandoning ship? I remember for months after the discussion was all about them potentially going to RTE.

The difference between second captains and OTB now though is that the second captains offering is a very clear thing. 5 people, 3 presenters. Coherent schedule, multi sports. And it's the 5 of them as a team, so you know there should be consistency going forward.

OTB is a rake of presenters of varying quality. A ridiculous amount of podcasts, split into specific sports. But it's an offering which has employees who will obviously change over time. Who is the overall editor of their output?

Yes this is the exact reason why 10 euro a month is too much for OTB. Ger Gilroy thinks quantity of podcasts justified it, when it's quality that counts.

Second Captains have Mcdevitt as main presenter and interviewer apart from when he's on holidays. Quality is consistently high, depending on the guests too. This is 5e a month.

OTB have Joe Molloy who's no Mcdevitt but he's very good. My opinion is if he did say more podcasts and interviews, 5e a month would be just about worth it. But probably not if you're already subscribed to second captains which is a cut above.

But 10e a month to then listen to a range of average broadcasters? And I include Gilroy in that, his interviews are basically a chance for him to broadcast his answers to his own questions. They're off their heads thinking they've got good value for people paying 10e a month. It's barely worth 2e a month.

What do you mean? Is there something mentally wrong with you? I posted that OTB swatted aside the report on Pauw. Which they did when it first came out. That is a correct and accurate statement. Regardless of what Joe done in the Athletic AFTER that my assertion that they disregarded it and thought that the allegations deserved no thought whatsoever is true.

The Athletic deal with it many months after OTB rubbished the report and allegations.

Is any of the above not true?

Ah ok. Sure it is 😉

Thread here

A lower price certainly would have worked in their favour but €1 a month would be too low. I know from my own experience, I’ve gotten something on a cheap subscription and because it’s so cheap, you forget about it for the month and cancel after a month or two. If they charge more, you’re more inclined to try and get your moneys worth.

€5 a month would have been the right figure to me

That is the conventional practice for subscription models to start cheaply or not restrict everything at once. Dip the toes in the water and see how the audience reacts before progressing to the eventual target offering. Keep the audience attached for as long as you can.

OTB seemingly thought it a good idea to ignore all that and go completely nuclear going from totally free to everything paywalled with a days notice. Ambitious is certainly one way to describe it!

If the numbers aren't what they expected it's also going to be very difficult for them to row back from this model. They've damaged trust with their audience and many will now unsubscribe from their social media platforms which now only provide brief promos and adverts for a paid so won't even have OTB on their radar should there be a change of tactic at some stage.