As you may remember, we started our life as an independent media company last August. Our first year has been extremely successful by just about any metric. We’ve signed up more than 5,000 members, with about half of those becoming paying subscribers.
This has allowed me to make this a full-time job and to pay fair rates to dozens of contributors. Aside from a few hiccups, I can confidently say that our offerings have never been better. We strengthened the features you told us you liked best, while also adding new elements like in-depth scouting reports and more first-hand reporting. We’ve traveled to more away games than ever before, discovered new voices and created a Discord community for our readers that is more vibrant and active than anything we ever had on the old site. (You can gain access to that community by upgrading your membership to the Supporter level [$75/year] or above.)
Perhaps most excitingly, we’ve also created new partnerships with other independent media like Backheeled.com, Lobbing Scorchers and The Cooler Guild. None of this would have been possible if we hadn’t gone independent.
Of course, to keep it all going we’re going to need your continued support. In August, nearly half of our annual subscriptions will be up for renewal. Unless you’ve specified otherwise, that will happen automatically as long as your payment information is up to date. Now might be a good time to check on that.
The one promise we’ve not really delivered on, though, is live events. We had one watch party during the playoffs last year, did a live show at the start of this year, but otherwise haven’t really had the time and energy to make those a regular thing. Our intention remains to do more of those soon.
This is where I admit that I’ve sort of buried the lede: To celebrate our one-year anniversary we’re going to be hosting a party of sorts. It’s going to be on Aug. 22 — actually one day after our literal one-year anniversary — and our friends at Fast Fashion brewery have agreed to host us at their SoDo location. They just opened an auxiliary space that’s next door to their brewery where we’re planning to do a live recording of our podcast. Think of it as a scaled down version of YachtCon. Scroll down for a FAQ about the event. We’ll have the whole space to ourselves and we’re planning for it to run roughly 7 PM-10 PM, with the live recording of the podcast scheduled to run from about 7:30 PM - 9 PM.
Of course, space is somewhat limited. We have about 100 tickets that we’re making available to all paid subscribers. If you’ve been waiting to become a paid subscriber until we had a celebratory event, here’s your cue:
