Broadcaster Eoin McDevitt and his four colleagues from the Second Captains podcast shared a production fee pay-pot of €817,000 last year, new accounts show.
The accounts for 2023 for the company behind the podcasts under the multi-award winning Second Captains banner, Second Captains Ltd., show that connected companies owned by McDevitt, Ken Early, Ciaran Murphy, Simon Hick and Mark Horgan were each paid €149,000 in fees for production work carried out on behalf of Second Captains Ltd last year.
The €745,000 paid in aggregate fees was a 20 per cent increase on the €620,000 – or €124,000 each – paid out by Second Captains Ltd to the five firms during 2022.
The five also shared an additional aggregate €72,000 in pay to directors last year – an average of €14,400 each.
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Underlining the buoyant 2023 for the podcast business, the company’s cash funds last year increased by €160,995 from €321,585 to €482,580.
The company’s cash has doubled from the €239,070 that was in place at the end of December 2021.
After the payout to the directors’ firms and other costs, the company recorded a profit of €4,711 for the year in keeping with the low profit of €1,947 in 2022.
Accumulated profits at the end of last year stood at €51,129.
The company’s revenues were boosted last year by the podcast staging a sell-out live podcast show at Dublin’s Olympia featuring guests such as the Liverpool former player and manager Graeme Souness to celebrate 10 years of the Second Captains.
The five Second Captains directors each hold a 20 per cent share in the company, and the podcast company generates the bulk of its revenues from paying subscribers.
The accounts state that the principal activity of the company is online content, radio, television, publishing and live-event production.
The podcast launched its paid subscription service in February 2017 and within the first day had attracted 2,500 subscribers.
Patrons pay €5+VAT per month to subscribe and news of the rising revenues at the company last year comes against a background of a 17 per cent increase in subscribers since October last from 14,250 to 16,678 today.
The 16,678 paid subscribers translates to annual subscription revenues of €1 million based on the €5 per month charge.
The Second Captains firm was also one of scores of outside firms to produce programming for RTÉ last year. It produced Second Captains Saturday on RTÉ 1 Radio in 2023 and is contracted to produce the show again this Summer.
The Second Captains team originally produced and presented the Off The Ball show on Newstalk radio for eight years, winning nine PPI national radio awards during that time.
They left the station in 2013 and subsequently moved to The Irish Times before going independent in 2017.
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