This is one of my favorite baseball podcasts and I firmly understand that they can’t continue to operate it while losing money, but to claim “freemium” while blocking off a third of the main podcast from normal listeners is absurd. Just own it and say you’re a pay to listen podcast now. Monthly bonus episode? Freemium. Discord access? Freemium. No ads? Definitely freemium. But block a third of your content behind a paywall and try to claim it’s freemium get out of here. You could accomplish this same exact thing by making an ad-free subscription for those that can afford that luxury without boxing out the over half of baseball consumers that don’t have a disposable income to be able to afford a 10$ a month subscription. Give us ads in the content, don’t take away the content from people that actually enjoy it.
[Side track thought: the irony of them claiming they are losing money on a podcast when they also operate a very successful website and Ben is at the very least involved in other podcasts that are giving him some sort of revenue while also actively bashing the Yankees owner for doing the same thing when he claims he’s losing money operating the Yankees but has all his other business ventures, yes I know it’s no where near the same scale but cmon, in an alternate universe there’s a Meg losing her mind and a Ben chuckling sarcastically at these two for this.]
TL;DR: A lot of low income people like baseball, keep it accessibly to them through ads instead of putting up a paywall. See Section 10/Baseball Is Dead for a good model.
