This is an automatically generated transcript of the PodPod episode ‘David Law: Taking The Tennis Podcast around the world’. We apologise for any errors in spelling and grammar.
Rhianna Dhillon
Hello and welcome to PodPod, the podcast all about podcasting made for podcasters by podcasters - and ex-broadcasters. I'm Rhianna Dhillon and this week I'm joined by Adam Shepherd, editor of PodPod and Gideon Spanier, editor in chief of Campaign and editorial director of PodPod. Hi both, how are you doing?
Gideon Spanier
Hello. Very well, thank you. It's springy.
Rhianna
Excellent. So we are about to toot our own horn a little bit, because we have got an award nomination. Adam?
Adam Shepherd
So this is part of the shortlist for the Publisher Podcast Awards, for which PodPod is shortlisted for the best podcast launch category, which we are very excited about. The Publisher Podcast Awards is as the name sort of implies, a celebration of podcasting excellence within the publishing and media owner space. So, for example, we are up against this particular category, the likes of the New Statesman, The Telegraph, and the Evening Standard, among others.
Rhianna
Gideon, you're a big boss, you must be thrilled about this.
Gideon
Well, yes, obviously, I'm gonna I'm pleased because I think also these awards are recognizing that a lot of media brands and companies new and old, you know, it's something new, like tortoise or something more established, like the telegraph can innovate. And there's a valuable and important new way to engage audiences. And there are lots of different categories, best political podcasts, best B2B, best entertainment and culture, best food and drink. And, you know, when I look at the whole range of podcasts, and which happens to be celebrated, and these awards, they are audio magazines, and we've talked about this in a lot of different episodes of PodPod, I think about what Alastair Campbell talked about way back when we sort of launched this sense that there's a tremendous variety. And I think the last thing to say about this, from my perspective is, these are professional media creators. And I really love the fact that there's lots of people who can do this from their bedroom or anywhere. But this is mainly journalists who are applying their journalistic skills to telling stories in audio.
Rhianna
It's a very exciting category to be a part of, especially because we're up against the Radio Times podcast, which was my old stomping ground. So you know, let the best woman win.
Adam
We are also not competing directly against but in the same sort of bracket as my old stomping ground as well IT Pro who is up for a couple of awards. And I just want to take this time to give just a special shout out to Rory Bathgate, who is up for the publisher podcast Hero of the Year Award this year, who filled my co-hosting shoes on the podcast when I left around October. So I just want to really, really highlight that it's a huge achievement for someone who's been in that role. And, you know, in the media in general, for I think less than six months. It's very impressive, incredible. And as a quick reminder, if you have missed out on a shortlist position for the Publisher Podcast Awards, entries are still open for the British Podcast Awards, up until the 18th of May, we will put a link to the submission page in the show notes. And we would encourage anyone who is interested in getting themselves nominated to get their nominations in as soon as possible.
Rhianna
Adam and I are both kind of buoyed up because we've just come off the back of an interview with the brilliant David Law who came on to talk all about the tennis podcast. So David Law is a former BBC broadcaster and sports commentator, and has done phenomenally well with the tennis podcast, which as you can imagine, is a podcast about tennis. I do really enjoy podcasts that have names that do exactly what you think it does. So one of the things that we kind of talk about is how he records from all over the world. And I just want to point out that I'm recording in a tiny little airless booth in the BBC. And I do apologise for the noise quality because I feel like there's a hum going on their footsteps all around me. But as David says it's all part of the ambiance. It's all part of the process of podcasting. So here he is David Law talking about The Tennis Podcast, David Law. Welcome to PodPod. How are you doing?
David Law
Oh, my pleasure to be with you. I'm really really well now that I finally Got over the jetlag, of coming back from Australia, which did take me about two weeks. But I don't I don't expect you to get the violins out for me.
Rhianna
How long were you there for? What were you covering?
David
I was there for three and a half weeks. Therefore, the Australian Open, which is the first Grand Slam tennis tournament of the year, and one of the big four events and we went out in force for the tennis podcast, myself and my two co hosts, Catherine Whitaker and Matt Roberts. And yeah, three and a half weeks in the sunshine, dare I say it, it was very nice.
Rhianna
No one's jealous at all. I really appreciate you chatting to us. I do feel like there's so much to cover with the tenants podcast, because you were just saying it's, it's been going for over a decade now. So it's really kind of one of the old guard when it comes to podcasts. So tell us how you first started in podcasting. And because you were a broadcaster, of course, initially,
David
yeah, well, I've been broadcasting for BBC Radio five live on tennis since 2002. So more than 20 years now. But I first heard of podcasts in 2006, I think when Ricky Gervais started his show, and I think probably that that stands for, for a lot of us really, who work in the industry. And I just found his show with Karl Pilkington. absolutely hilarious. And, in 2007, actually started the first podcast I ever worked on for a tennis tournament at the Queen's club, just before Wimbledon, where I was the media director. And I was just fascinated by the medium generally. And so we managed to convince them to run a sort of 10 part. Podcast, talking about the events, the build up to it, interviewing players, that kind of thing. We did not really know what on earth we were doing. Obviously, back then you had to download podcasts onto a computer and sync them up to an iPad. It wasn't very successful. Not many people were listening to it. But it was my first step. Yeah, my first ever go at it. And it did not get a recommission the following year. But the truth is that that sort of whetted my appetite to want to have a podcast one day, but it took several years before I was in a place where I understood the technology enough and actually thought that there might be some sort of an interest out there for one. And I mean, I always used to think I would have to interview big name guests. Because why would they want to listen to me, unless I'm with somebody of note. And it was my co host, my longtime co host, Catherine Whitaker, who's been with me, from the start on the show, she was working for me at the time. And now I'm virtually working for her now. But I mean, she just said, she said the kind of podcasts that she likes to listen to are ones where there are a couple of people, or maybe three people talking about a subject on a regular basis and having some fun, and that's what she liked to listen to. And, we went back and forth on this. And I won for the first six months. And we had, we had a big name guest in every single edition in 2012. And then I ran out of guests and realised Oh, okay, well now what do we do? I've, I've exhausted my entire contact book. And she said, Well, like I said, I think we should just have a conversation about the sport every week, which is kind of what we did in part two of the show on a weekly basis. And that's what it's ended up growing into. We've, it's one of those things because we had such a small audience early on, we got to make all the mistakes that we felt we needed to make in order to get to the sort of format that we now have. And we now have a third voice, which is Matt Roberts, who came on board as an intern with us about eight years ago when he was a student and he came on to do our social media and that sort of thing. And one day, we handed him a mic and asked him a question about tennis. And suddenly everybody loved listening to him rather than us. So he's become an ever present for us. He now works for us full time and we couldn't do it without him was
Rhianna
your kind of loyal audience once they realised that you weren't going to have big hitters? You know, in your words each week, was that a problem? For them? It was only feedback. Do they really not care?
David
I mean, I think the truth is, we didn't get that much feedback, really, we were learning as we went along. But what we did notice is that as it started to grow, we noticed in our listening fingers that more people listened to us having a chat in the pub about what's gone in, in the tennis world for the last week than if we went and interviewed. I don't know Carlos Moya. No offence to Carlos Moya was our first ever guest in our episode number one, former French Open champion great guy, but for whatever reason, people didn't listen to that one, anywhere near as much as they will Listen to us, I'm gonna chat about what we'd seen on the telly that we come from all around the world on the tennis circuit. So, I mean that we still do have guests, we've, we recently had a big interview with Jim Courier when we were in Australia, a former Australian Open champion, and he was very popular. But really, I think, if I think of all the podcasts that I listened to now, Katherine was right, I hate to say it, she was right. I listened to the NFL, which is three guys talking about what's going on in the NFL all week. I listened to no laying up the golf podcast, where there's five friends in America who have no background at all in the sport, other than they love it. And then people loved listening to them. And it's the same all the way all the way down football weekly from The Guardian journalist to those who work in the sport, but basically, they're relatable human beings who I enjoy listening to a conversation from. And, and I think that that's pretty much what I found all the way through. And it does appear to be what our listeners appreciate about us.
Rhianna
And sorry, this is a silly question. But you know, you are a sports commentator kind of over you cover everything. So why was tennis specifically a gap in the market? Or was it a real particular passion?
David
Yeah, I mean, it's, it's both really, really, I mean, I have worked in tennis, pretty much since I left university, and I do love all of the sports I have worked a little bit in football and, and things like that. And I love football and a lot of other different sports. But tennis is the one where I had a foothold. It's where I had the contacts booked, and I was exhausted within six months. But I mean, the truth is, that's the sport, I really know. That's the one I am known to work in, and I've commentated on Wimbledon for 20 years. But also, when I looked around, there were no tennis podcasts. And that's why we called it the tennis podcast at the time. I mean, and I also thought, by giving it that name, we better do a decent job of this, because otherwise, we're selling the listener short by calling it the tennis podcast. And so we've been obsessive, quite honestly, for the last 10 years, you know, every single week, it's got to go out. And then we started to do them daily at Grand Slam tennis tournaments, which are, as I mentioned earlier, two, three weeks long. And so you're, you're, you're basically committing to a daily show every single night, no matter what time the tennis finishes. And, in Australia, there was a day that the play finished at 4am. We recorded that podcast, and we went to bed at 7am. That is what you use what we have committed to and what we make ourselves do, because that's the job. And you know, that's what the tennis podcast is. It's hopefully something reliable for the listener, that if they just want to get up to speed with what's going on, and hopefully enjoy the conversation at the same time. Whether
Adam
Now there's something I just want to touch on. Because obviously you've just come back from covering the Australian Open you do as you mentioned, a lot of these international tournaments. How do you juggle the time zone difference from a production perspective? Do you effectively uproot the entire operation and move it to wherever the tournament is? Are you liaising with kind of contacts and extended team members who are back home in the UK while you're at these international matches? How does that work? Does that provide challenges or problems that you have to overcome in the process?
David
It? It does. And actually, I would say the most challenging period was the pandemic, really, because we weren't able to go on site to these tennis tournaments. I mean, if I give you an example of the Australian Open that has just gone, relatively speaking, that's quite simple to uproot. Because the truth is, we record the show ourselves in person on site, the three of us are flying out there. I mean, it's a very expensive thing to do. But in terms of the actual logistics of, of recording it, we're all in the same room. Every night, we're living together in an airbnb Together, we go to the tournament, we go to the press conferences, we ask all the questions of the players. And then we come home and we talk about it, that that's basically what the show is. So there's minimal editing involved. It's just us having a chat for an hour, and then we produce it we upload it and that's that I mean, there is nobody else that we rely on for that process when we're on site and when we do hire somebody, one person back in the UK one person in the US in order to look after our Twitter feed for instance it so that we have a constant flow on there, but I mean When we were working during the pandemic, during the grand slams, the US Open was really difficult. Because the three of us were in separate locations in the UK, we were doing every show remotely on Zoom, and we recorded locally. So in order to guarantee the quality of it, we record in three separate tracks, basically in the middle of the night, because the United States was five hours behind us, so they finish a match at midnight that we really feel we need to keep in, that means we're recording at 5am. And we're doing it remotely. We then sometimes did have an editor to put it all together. But there were several days during the US Open of 2021. The one that Mr. Ricardo one, when I would go, I would be commentating for the BBC, from their Salford studios, go back to the hotel room, record the podcast with Katherine and Matt. And then I'd go and have breakfast before I went to bed. And that happened a lot. And it's not very good for you, I have to be honest with you. But still, those are the logistics involved with the on site or the Grand Slam tournament operation. But we only travelled to those four grand slams. So that's about eight, eight to 10 weeks a year. And we are actually going. I'll make you jealous again, we're going to Indian Wells in California in a couple of weeks time for the event out there. But the rest of it we do as a remote recording, we follow the tours. And we do it weekly recording most of the time remotely so that sometimes we have an editor, particularly if we do a more elaborate production on something but most of the time the show is the three of us having a chat.
Rhianna
What happens when there aren't any grand slams, what happens when the season is over?
David
Well, the truth is round a tennis season doesn't really end. It's just that you're not taking much notice of it because a lot of the tournaments aren't that big, relatively speaking. You know, it starts in January. I mean, this year is tall. This year's season started, I think, on December the 29th of last year, and then ended on December the third or something at the end of the year. That is what the tennis season is like . It follows the sun, it goes all around the world, following the sun, like a big travelling circus. It's just that, depending on the size of the tournament, is how much coverage it gets. However, we're the tennis podcast. So we're covering all of it. And hopefully people stay with us.
Rhianna
Do you have a preferred tournament or grand slam that you love, like hanging out at? You know, that has like the best vibe for the three of you?
David
Well, I mean, I've been working in tennis for more than 20 years. And I feel like I finally cracked it because the five tournaments that I go to are the ones I liked the most. And that's the Australian Open in January when it's horrible here. I will go to the French Open in Paris in May. It's lovely. It's springtime in Paris. I go to Wimbledon, obviously, it's Wimbledon. I go to the US Open in September, where it's night sessions, and it's like Disney World and a sporting environment. And now suddenly, I've managed to get this gig in March to go to Indian Wells in California, in the desert where there's beautiful mountain ranges. And yeah, hang out there for two weeks. So the truth is, they're all brilliant places. And they're all very different. And I cannot believe my luck.
Adam
So then, with all of this travel, and that many weeks long runs doing daily podcasts. Tell us a little bit about the strain that that puts on you guys from a production perspective. does. Does the daily podcast switch over? take you a while to kind of get into the swing of when you've been used to doing weekly ones up until then?
David
Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, I would say not because when we do the dailies, we are on site. So you're surrounded, you're immersed in this atmosphere and loads and loads of things going on. And they're like four separate Olympics every year in the tennis world. And so they're, they're the biggest events. That's why we do them daily. The rest of the year doesn't warrant daily coverage really, it warrants once a week, occasionally twice a week but so at the end of every Grand Slam day, it feels like we've barely got enough time to fit it all in to fit all the stuff that we've seen and heard and want to talk about into the show and we try to keep each show to an hour or less we don't like to go over if we can but I mean it's exhilarating. Truthfully, Adam, on to be on site to be amongst all these people and and all the sights and sounds and matches and you never know where the story is going to come from. So I would say actually in a way it's it's easier Because the other thing is I've got a wife and two kids at home and, and when I go on site to a tennis tournament, I can be utterly selfish, and just sort of throw myself into this podcast production and all the stories that are there without feeling, oh, it's time to pick up the kids or something like that. So the weekly show is obviously less taxing, because I've only got to do it once a week. But I do obviously have a life.
Rhianna
How did you sort of decide on the content? Because I know, of course, apart from the commentating and the discussion of the sport itself, you also talk about the politics of what's going on in the world of sport. And, you know, you had some incredibly powerful conversations around sexual abuse, in tennis and in coaching. So, you know, was that a discussion? Or was it just like, well, obviously, we're going to cover this?
David
Yeah, I think that is something very important to us that if there is something that is heavy and hard hitting within the sport, we need to be covering it. And the truth is, we were just being ourselves, these subjects matter to us as individuals, Katherine is a is a powerful speaker about the importance of equality and, and she's made me a better, frankly, a better feminist, by by understanding and listening to her and understanding and discovering a different way of looking at things. And I think these are the conversations we would be having in the pub anyway, outraged at a situation or concern about another situation, and therefore that is going to get covered in our podcast. And yet, sometimes we've had to upset some people by things we've talked about, because they're important. Other times we've, we had the great former player, Pam Shriver come to us, former doubles partner, and Martin and Everton over and tell us, she had a story she wanted to tell about having had an inappropriate relationship with her coach who was 35 years as senior throughout most of her late teens and early 20s. And she had never told the story before. And she listened to her show, and she thought we would help her to tell the story. And so that's what we did. And, yeah, we, we want to be that, that sort of podcast that can both entertain and make people laugh and feel like good company and everything else that a podcast does, if it's a good one, but also tell some important stories and hopefully break some news and lead lead the agenda if we can.
Rhianna
The name, the tennis podcast is such a perfect name for what you do. I mean it you know, you know exactly what it is. How did you manage to get that name by being first?
David
In truth, it was 2012, I sent a message to Katherine, who'd been working for me for about five years I worked in, as well as my broadcasting I worked in public relations for for tennis tournaments. And she was fresh out of university and working for me, and she'd never done a bit of broadcasting in her life before. And I said to her, and I knew she loved podcasts as well. We listened to it, we seemed to just independently listen to all the same stuff, or all the same things made us laugh, we would end up comparing notes. And we sort of just started to realise we just kind of were on the same wavelength about a lot of things, not just working together. And I said, What about we start our own podcast and call it the tennis podcast? Because I'd looked around and I couldn't find that name anywhere. So that's what we did. And you know, here we are 10 years later, and as well as the podcast, she has now become one of the best sports broadcasters in the country. You know, she is fronting Amazon Prime videos tennis coverage, she was the, the the anchor the night that Emma Radek Khan, who won the US Open, you know, on Channel Four for 11 million people, you know, she's, she's just a brilliant broadcaster. And I mean, I'm really proud that it's the tennis podcast that enabled people to discover that she was that good. And, frankly, for her to discover that she was that good at it. So yeah, it's it's quite a cool story, even if I do say,
Rhianna
It's fantastic. And also the fact that because you do the dailies, you are always there for the breaking news, as well as you know, the kind of general chat so is there a story that you're really particularly proud to have broken? Because you were there first on the scene, so to speak, you were there at four in the morning, you know?
David
Yeah, I mean, a lot of the time when we're on the ground, at tournaments like the Grand Slams, we are reacting to what what's happened, but what we are also able to do and it's the reason we pay all the money to go on site out so that we can go in the press conference and be asking the questions of the players immediately after, after they finished. I mean, Andy Murray did this little press media huddle at 4:30am, the night after he'd finished this match and, and I was the final question in the huddle, I said to him, Andy, is it about time tennis stopped playing tennis at 430. And he just, that was like lighting the blue Touch Paper for him. And he just went off on a rant about What a disgrace it was, and how if he wanted his kids to be the ball kids, he would be snapping, if they came home at 530 in the morning, stuff like that. So we don't want to just react, we want to be part of the news gathering process of being there being a media on a media member on site and an outlet in our own right. But, and I would say, just to go back to the PAM Shriver stories, being able to tell a story, or help her tell her story about what happened to her, and break that news was a very proud moment.
Adam
I think that's really interesting. Because while I haven't covered grand slams, or tennis tournaments, I've gone on site at various international events and conferences and Rhianna, I'm sure you've you've done similar and it is always a really special feeling to be able to have that direct access to those people and those kind of leaders in whatever industry it's in. And if you can get out there to ask those questions and be in those rooms. It can be really powerful. I also think it's particularly interesting how you've approached it. I mean, you mentioned it's kind of an expensive endeavour, taking all three of you to the other side of the world. And you launched a subscription service in order to help fund that. So I wonder if you can tell us a little bit more about your kind of approach to that subscription play, which is something that a lot of other podcasters are actively exploring.
David
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I mean, if I go back to the start, and 10 years ago, I think the first five years of producing this show, we made no money at all, we lost money. And I would have been, I bought the equipment that we were using at the time. It's a little more sophisticated now than it was then. But yeah, it was straight out of our pockets in order to fund the show. And my view was always let's see if we can build an audience, let's see if we can make a show that people enjoy. And if we can, then maybe we can figure out a way to get it sponsored, or I don't know, one of the reasons I called it the tennis podcast was I thought, oh, a brand might come in and call themselves the such bank, tennis podcast. It never is. So that didn't work. But I mean, that was the initial idea. As it happens, I think the tennis podcast as a brand name in its own right is what's become useful to us, because that's what people search for when they want to find a podcast about tennis. But then about five or six years ago, when we were realising we're literally making no money at all. But we do seem to have an audience that cares about what we're doing now. We were getting emails on a daily basis from people saying how much they enjoy it. And I never had that about, say, commentary work for BBC Radio that just doesn't happen. Because it's not very good.
Rhianna
Yeah. But
David
the truth is that it's that kind of medium. I'm sure you've heard that from many of your contributors. I remember hearing Jon Sopel talk about it. Alastair Campbell talked about how to get to the kind of connection that podcasts have with their audience. And so we actually for I think, about four years, we ran a Kickstarter on an annual basis to say, right, if we can raise this amount of money, then we can keep the show going weekly, and daily during the grand slams, that still kind of very much around our other work. But that's what we decided we would do. We do a crowdfunding operation. And then a couple years later, when we first handed Matt Robertson microphone and everybody loved him, we said, well, if we can raise a bit more, we'll give this guy a job. And he will be he can work for us full time after university. And they hit that target as well. And so we just kept increasing these targets and then we said oh, we'll take him to Australia with us. If you if you put in this much and they did it. And then we then we got to the point where we thought we cannot keep asking these people for more money. You know, we the same people. We cannot do that. That's it's not fair on them. And it's also just doesn't really feel sustainable. And we had a lot of chats with other people. And some of the people that were the biggest help to us were those that run the cycling podcast. Richard Moore, who sadly passed away a year ago, and who's who was such a great help to me and gave me such invaluable advice, and Lionel Bernie and, and they'd got a subscription system a little similar to Patreon, but with supporting cast and, and they heartily recommended them. And they said, Look, we think that if you provide something in addition to, to your regular show, people will be more likely to get behind it. And you're not just constantly having to ask for more money, you're just providing a service. And if people want it, they pay for it. And so that's what we did. And about a year and a half ago, we started a subscription system called Friends of the tennis podcast. And people pay either five pounds a month or 50 pounds a year to become a friend of the tennis podcast. And for that, we, I think we produced last year about 25 to 30, no, maybe 30 additional podcasts of the course of the year and that was those were Q and A's with us. We we run a series called tennis relived in which we go back in time and uncover a story from the past or a great match from the past and, and that all came from the pandemic when we didn't have tennis for six months. And we invented tennis relief as a way to kind of keep going and producing shows about matches that have happened 50 years ago, or people that had been important and that sort of thing. But then we also have other elevated premium categories. If people want to have a shout out from us on the show, they pay more if they want to introduce the show, and have their name in this kind of open credit sort of thing. And we've got we've got 50 people a year that actually pay for their pet to be our mascot for an episode. I mean, that's that was Katherine's idea. And I said, Katherine, that is never gonna happen. But sure enough, they sell out every year, we have 50 weekly episodes, and 50 people say I want my pet to be your mascot for that episode,
Adam
And hypothetically, you know, how much would that cost? Asking for a friend?
David
Well, all of those 50 went for 200 pounds each. Wow. You know, we do it all through the supporting cast. It's all on the public platform there. And then there are people who pay more to be our personal mascots, we've got those as well. These are pets. There's people that can be guest editors of a show of our
Adam
Guest editors?
Rhianna
How does that work?
David
I mean, effectively what they're doing is they're presenting them with a few ideas for our tennis relieved shows. I study Monica Salish's career, or Venus Williams, or the day that Jimmy Connors reached the semifinals of the USA at age 39. And there are people who love the story ideas and, and they'll choose one and then they'll they'll come up with a load of points they would love to see covered in the show or people with they'd love to hear from and then off we go. And we try to speak to people that were there in the stadium that day, or commentating or, or people who've got memories of it. And we also send Matt off because he loves his research. So we send him off to the Wimbledon library, and he just gets his head down and starts reading up on these subjects. And, and we produce kind of an oral history, I suppose. Versions of accounts from people that were down the day, plus our own discoveries as we researched them. But yeah, it's all just waste. There are a lot of people that can't or wouldn't want to pay extra money for a podcast or to help a podcast, but there are some people that that really, really matters to them. And, you know, we get so many emails really from particularly during the pandemic of people who were going through a tough time and we were part of their company, the part of the way of getting through it and and I know that that's the case for me with other podcasts I've felt that I've lent on those voices in my head when I might have been struggling and hold business model is one I think of goodwill. It's about what we will produce for you on a weekly and a daily basis at the Grand Slams no matter what. I will be falling asleep on the keyboard but we will produce the show for you. And in return. You help us to do it. And you'll get some stuff in extra as well.
Rhianna
Are there any of those sorts of tears that you regret? Do Weighing, you know, like my husband has started his podcast, he promised to send out a sticker for every UK subscriber. And then he found himself having to write. thank you notes on the back of stickers for like months and months and months. Any event kind of have you ever kind of overshot that?
David
Well, I tell you, I think that that is a very, very valid point, because I remember when we first did our initial Kickstarter, and we were, you know, you literally trying to think of anything that that people might want. And we'd seen one of the shows a year earlier do exactly this thing. And I kind of watched what they did. And, and, and I discovered what not to do as a result. I mean, look, they did a great job, they raised their rates, good, good funding. And they did, they did a brilliant job. But one of the things they promised was that they would send a postcard to everybody who paid a certain amount from every Grand Slam tournament. And they were writing handwriting, hundreds of postcards, and sending them from these locations, and some of them weren't getting there, you know, it's not their fault, but they were getting lost in the post and all these sort of things. And I just realised, don't sign up to anything that isn't kind of easy to deliver. And that means a shout out on the show. Yes, we will let you pay us to have your pet as our mascot and all that entails is us telling everybody on the podcast that your pet is our mascot, and we will put a picture of your pet in our newsletter that goes out on email. It's not a lot. Not a lot of work for us really. So we very much set out to make it as labour intensive as possible.
Adam
That is phenomenal. That is hands down my favourite monetization strategy that I have ever heard. But speaking of labour intensiveness, one thing that I wanted to touch on because I am an enormous Tech head, I'm really curious about the remote recording equipment that you take when you go to international tournaments, what is in your kitbag.
David
We've all got a zoom h6 recorder, which is one of these four channel recorders. So we can have four mics plugged in at any one time to connoisseurs' choice. Yeah, pretty much the maximum amount that I think we would typically need the three of us, we sometimes have a guest. So we've got four. And then we're using Bayer dynamic and 58 microphones, which are basically the field microphones I used when I started at the BBC 20 plus years ago. I have no idea if they're the best one, the only one I've ever used. And I just, I just sort of, I'm too scared to try anything else. But basically, that's all we use. And because it's just a conversation around a cafe table or, or whatever it might be. That's then just stuck into the laptop edited on in my case, something as simple as audacity, Max got slightly more editing credentials than me. So he'll use an audition or something like that. And then that's that, and up, it goes.
Adam
Fantastic.
Rhianna
Radio broadcasts you because you're already a broadcaster, I'm a radio broadcaster, we'd come from that sort of idea of when you're broadcasting, everything has to be silent. I'm in a booth at the BBC right now. And I can hear footsteps outside and I'm freaking out that, you know, that's going to come through online, like it's just so ingrained with podcasting, how have you sort of found that transition in terms of being more relaxed when it comes to recordings are you You know, because you, you will never guaranteed, you know, a really silent hotel room, or anything, you know, when you're all kind of travelling around the world, you don't necessarily know which locations you're going to be able to record in. So how do you sort of balance that, you know, what is the thing that you need to have above all else? And what can kind of fall by the wayside if necessary?
David
Yeah, I mean, I think general hubbub and sounds of where we are part of the appeal in especially when we're on site at the Grand Slam tournaments. We want people to hear what's going on all around us. And, you know, when we were in New York, I remember one of the challenges we had a few years ago, Catherine was presenting the TV coverage as well as doing the podcast and I remember Joining her in her car, she's going back into Manhattan, and we would sort of record the first half of the podcast in the car on the way back and we would tell listeners, we're in the we're in the car. We're going over the bridge, we're going into Manhattan. This is what happened today, Lala. We pull up outside our hotel, open the doors and suddenly you've got sirens. You've got arguments and you can hear goodness knows what. And we just tell people. This is what's happening with jets. We're stumbling out of the car. Yeah, that somebody's obviously got in trouble. That's why the police are here. And then we decamped into the hotel lobby and kept the thing running. And if stuff happens whilst we're recording it staying in. I mean, there was one time I think Catherine got stung by a bee live on. Me, I thought she's never gonna let me keep this in. But sure, sure enough, she did. So, you know, to me, that's, that's part of the, the appeal is, is, if you were sitting at the picnic table, or in the pub with us, this is what it would sound like. So that's what you're going to hear.
Rhianna
What about filming? Do you ever film any of those bits? Do you ever have a camera going at the same time,
David
honestly, where we're probably a few years late with this 10 years and but we just about starting to realise that that would probably be a good idea. Look, I'm quite a traditionalist when it comes to podcasts if you can be a traditionalist after such a new medium, but I find it quite hard to get away from the idea of this being an audio medium, this is to me, it's the appeal of it. It's the attraction of it. And it's the it's the flexibility of it, the fact that I can sail all the stuff that we do, whether we're on the road, we're in a car, and we're stumbling out, and we're still recording and everything else, I don't think we could do that on camera. But at the same time, I am aware of the power of YouTube and visual sharing and all that sort of thing. So we need to come up with something that will fulfil that goal as well. But I can't get away from the fact that the reason those that contact us everyday do so is because we're in their ears and because their imagination gets to play a part in that experience, and I think you do lose something being on camera as a result of that. But, you know, we're trying to try to do both,
Rhianna
is that Matt or Catherine died, it
David
is a realisation that we're supposed to be doing it. So we're gonna give it a go.
Adam
Now one thing I wanted to touch on is we've talked about monetization already through the Friends of the tennis podcast subscriptions game. But I wanted to touch on the kind of sponsorship angle, because you have, of course, a number of famous fans, one of whom is Billie Jean King, who I believe now represents the podcast through her sort of management consulting firm. Can you tell us a little bit more about that side of the business of the podcast if you like,
David
We got to know Billie Jean King about two, two and a half years ago when we realised that she had been introduced to the show herself and started listening to it. And we'd been actually trying to ask for an interview with her for a few years without success. Because who are we? And then suddenly, she discovered the show as a listener and suddenly the doors opened and we can actually get this great interview with it. And while we found, we found that she was not only listening to every show, she was actually going all the way through the back catalogue which was more than 1000 episodes long. Wow. She reckons she's listened to most if not all of them now. And as I mentioned, Catherine is a TV presenter herself, we have the podcast and they have a company called Billie Jean King enterprises which has started representing athletes and media people. And we asked for some help because whilst we have managed to get a bit of sponsorship here and there, there's only so much we can do on our own. And obviously, if you call up somebody and say you're bullshitting King enterprises, you've got a bit more of a kind of foot in the door than you have if you say, Hey, I'm David law. Can I speak about the tennis podcast? And they say, who? Who you are. And so that has led to a sponsorship we currently have with a company called on location, which is a premium travel and hospitality company, which the reason we're going to new miles in California is because they are the official travel operator for that tournament. So they're bringing us there to create podcasts and content at the tournament and show off the place and talk about it. And so they have been our sponsorship sponsor for the last six weeks. They will be for the next few months. But yeah, it is really quite a new thing. I mean, we've only been represented by Billie Jean King Enterprises for the last six months, though. They're amazing people. What's really nice is we know they genuinely love our show. and that they're doing it for that reason, and they believe in it. You know, there's, there's nothing more to it than that. And we've already seen the difference they can make in terms of just telling people about it. And hopefully, hopefully, it'll lead to more sponsorship. But the beauty of having the subscription service friends on the tennis podcast at the same time is that we're not reliant on just the one thing, and I'm sure many in the industry have found that you, you can't just have one. One way of making a living from it.
Rhianna
Circling back to what you were saying at the beginning, when I spoke to you and you said that you were just getting over your jet lag. Do you have any good jetlag tips for some of, you know, podcast traveller listeners?
David
Oh, yeah. No, I wish I had travelled to Australia for about 20 years, I am so rubbish at it, really, I'm not great with sleep at the best of times, because there's always so much to do. And there's always so many possibilities. And my mind is always racing. But I used to think that I didn't need sleep, and then I could sort of, you know, work all night and those sorts of things. And then, and then I discovered the dad got long COVID, about 18 months ago and realised that actually, no, that's, that's not the greatest idea, you need to sleep and you need to, you need to avoid jet lag, which, in my line of work is not very possible thing to do. But I don't, in all honesty, Rihanna, I'm sorry to say,
Rhianna
That's okay. But actually jumped quickly, jumping off the back of that, you know, I was talking today, someone was asking me about, you know, what are the pitfalls of being a freelancer? And I was saying, you know, you can burn out because you do so much. And especially, you will say yes to everything, when you kind of do essentially doing your own podcast, and that is your, you know, income right now, presumably, you have to do like, it sounds like you do everything all the time. Do you burn out? Do you kind of make sure that you have downtime? How do you look after yourself, sort of mentally and physically, you have to be really careful,
David
I think, and I've, I've heard this from a lot of people in our sort of position and, and I've tried to learn from people who've already done it. I mentioned the golf podcast, not laying up a little earlier. And I got to know one of the guys who runs that. And they all gave up their jobs just the same way as I have in order to focus on this. And it's, it's wonderful, it's brilliant, we love it. But it is absolutely all consuming. And if you're not careful, you could be working every hour that you are awake and thinking about it every hour, you're awake and and to be honest, I do unless I make something else to do. I mean, I've got kids, so I go out and I hang out with them. And, then the podcast is off limits for a bit. But you do have to be really careful. And I think you have to you have to build in work practices and make sure you have certain times the day that you don't work and don't think about it and don't have zoom meetings and, and all the rest of it and make sure you have a couple of weeks off and, and my two co hosts Matt and Catherine are they're very attentive, where I'm concerned because they realise what that I'm somebody who could burn out and could have an issue if I don't just calm down and stop having ideas. So they're, they're constantly on my case about it, and trying to pick up the slack from me. And, you know, I mean, I'm lucky that I've worked with two people who are great friends of mine who are genuinely genuine, we all genuinely care about each other and, and so we look out for each other in that way. And that's how I avoid it really is by having people around me who say, you need to stop now.
Rhianna
Well, David, you need to stop now. It's the end of the podcast. Thank you so much for joining us. That was brilliant. I loved it. You've kind of really brought us into your world and into the tennis podcast and it's lovely hearing how passionate you are about it. So thank you so much.
David
My pleasure. Thank you for having me on. much. Appreciate it.
Rhianna
That was genuinely one of my favourite interviews, I think and I think because David is so passionate about tennis, and about podcasting. I think that's what's so lovely. I think they seem to be kind of equal loves in his life, which is always so nice to hear. Adam, I know you were sort of like buzzing as well off the back of this. Why was this such a great one? You know, what kind of tips did he give that you thought really stood out?
Adam
One of the things that really stuck out to me was their approach to monetization and particularly their sort of flexibility with regards to monetization. The pet sponsorship thing has just absolutely killed me. I am deceased that I never even occurred to me as an option. And I am going to lobby strongly that we should make that part of the pod pod revenue model. Going forward, your pet could be the official mascot for pod pod. I think that's absolutely fantastic. But aside from the fact that it is downright hilarious, it shows off the kind of flexibility of a subscription based revenue model and the kinds of added value content that you can provide and the kind of extra bits that you can offer for additional kind of subscription costs that don't actually, as David was saying, require really any additional legwork. You know, you don't have to offer an extra bonus podcast for subscribers, you don't have to offer a separate newsletter, it can just be things as simple as shout outs and pet sponsorships.
Gideon
I do think this idea of being a friend is an interesting idea, particularly for this kind of audience, if I can put it like that. And I think of what the Guardian has achieved with its sort of voluntary membership model. And you know, it so happens that tennis we know is, for better or worse, tracks quite an affluent following. And now we've all known this, it's the Holy Grail of how do you make enough money to sustain what you're doing and ideally, be profitable? So I think it's great, really, I mean, Phil, not that we're gonna start asking people to become friends with Pol Pot, but an interesting idea.
Rhianna
I'm very happy to nominate my two rabbits, Apollo and Starbuck, to be the show's mascot, though.
Adam
Fantastic names. Yeah, I'm a
Rhianna
sci fi nerd. What can I say? One, one other thing that I really loved hearing about was the kind of the location stuff and, and hearing just about the sort of tenacity of recording, wherever, whatever, whatever time, whatever life work throws at you. They just keep recording. And because they know how important it is to have that regularity. And those episodes drop into a feed every single week. I just think that sort of dedication really does, really deserves the kind of rewards that they are currently reaping. So it's, you know, you feel really great and happy for them because they're putting so much into podcasting. And I think that can only be a good thing for other people as well. What they're doing is really elevating the medium of podcasting.
Adam
Yeah, absolutely. It's like Gonzo, podcasting, almost that kind of freedom to just keep rolling and bring, you know, bringing what you're experiencing, to the audience kind of as close to live and unfiltered and raw, as it's possible to get. That's one of the big appeals with podcasting. And I know, it's something that a lot of podcasters do carve offers as bonus content, live reactions from stuff, you know, for example, you know, we've just come out of the screening for the latest man, for example, we've literally just walked out of the theatre with a live immediate take, couldn't possibly say maybe a bus drove past with an advert on the side. Couldn't possibly say Disney, please don't say me. But it's yeah, it's just that live reaction is something that a lot of people find super engaging. And podcasting is something that gives you the ability to do that, in ways that I feel like radio hasn't necessarily tapped into other mediums haven't necessarily tapped into in the same way.
Rhianna
Yeah, I do think there is that element of, you know, the kind of the person on the street during the Vox pops and that sort of like that immediate reaction, but actually, I don't know that sort of guerilla style podcasting. I really enjoyed hearing about that
Adam
Guerilla podcasting. I love that.
Rhianna
Thank you so much for listening, and you can find out so much more on PodPod.com sign up to our daily email bulletins and then follow us on social at @PodPodOfficial. Never miss an episode by subscribing. And it would be lovely if you could rate and review us as well. We're always very grateful for that. Thank you so much to Adam Shepherd and Gideon Spanier for their invaluable insights as ever, and of course, to David law for talking all about The Tennis Podcast. PodPod is produced by Emma Corsham for Haymarket Business Media, and I'm your host Rhianna Dhillon. Bye.
