The football (soccer!) podcast for people that know nothing about the sport or are looking to rediscover it in a new way.

Both myself (Harry) and Andrew have a background playing youth soccer growing up as kids in California. We came to love the sport in similar ways, through highlight reels, favorite players, the excitement and flair of individual moments, and just the unique atmosphere that surrounds the sport of soccer. We've grown to both realize we're Manchester United fans and we have a stark interest in the sport that's slowly gaining ground in the United States. What's funny is, we have NO recollection at all in how we got really deep into the sport of soccer as Americans. There was no "single" gateway into the sport and as we remarked about that, we realized that other newer fans that wanted to learn about soccer, especially Americans, might experience the same barrier.
Our podcast is about introducing the basics (and not so basics) to an American audience. While Americans are the primary listeners, it doesn't stop the podcast for being an excellent refresher for fans that are getting back into following the sport or more avid fans to brush up on the basics from time to time.

Podcasting is a great way to just capture the natural conversation that Andrew and I have about the sport anyways. We're in group chats and we talk back and forth about the sport and matches anyways, it made sense to tape what we were doing in a more "live" format and have it be informative for others as well.
Our initial goals were to just share knowledge and interesting snippets about the sport of soccer with our close friends. We've gotten more and more interest via social media, even some folks asking to be interviewed as well. We also realized that as Americans, it's really hard to "get into" the sport of soccer without knowing someone that can teach it to you. There's not many resources (i.e. Soccer for Dummies) because there are a decent amount of rules and history that are associated with the game. If you want to pick a team, a player, or a league to follow for example, there's a huge amount of research involved with that. We wanted to break each element down into easily digestible pieces for fans to understand.
We started our podcast in October of 2022. It took us about a few weeks to release our first episode and from there, we had a weekly cadence. We're on a spring break right now but coming back in July of 2023 with bi-weekly episodes.

We followed a weekly release schedule but we'll be switching to bi-weekly in July. It takes us about a few days to produce an episode and often times, we'll try to stack multiple episodes in one recording session.
We both have day jobs (Andrew is doing a graduate degree and working on the side(!) and will go into counseling and I'm working in the financial tech space) so we often block off a night to record the episodes that we'll be releasing. We also collaborate on the notes in the week leading up to the recording session.
We spend $0.00 on the podcast, just editing ourselves with Logic Pro, hosting on Spotify Podcasts (formerly Anchor), marketing on social media, etc. Of course, we'd love to find better ways to get our podcast out there, but with limited resources, we're more than happy with where we are currently.

We are willing to take sponsorship but haven't gotten big enough for it yet. No revenue as of yet. But fingers crossed for more interest as soccer takes off more and more in the US! (We've shouted out Spindrift multiple times on the podcast so here's looking at you, Spindrift)
We're around 1500 downloads so far and before our break, we averaged around 80-100 downloads per month.
Really, the biggest benefit to myself and Andrew is the fact that we're learning new things as we're educating our audiences. The research that we put into the topics (i.e. how did the penalty kick originate? why is there promotion and relegation in European soccer?) gives us a lot more context on a sport with both enjoy immensely. And then we can explain it in a concise way that gives more context to newer fans that really want to get into the sport.

We use Logic Pro for editing, Zoom for video conferencing, OBS for recording Zoom, and both Andrew and myself use microphones for audio. I use an SM7B going into a UA Apollo Solo and Andrew uses a Yeti Snowball going into the Mac directly into Audacity.
We find guests either through friends or even now on Instagram!
We'll prepare each episode by doing some research a few days before each episode and just scouring the internet for some key statistics, facts, and cross-checking the information across various sources. For example, if penalty kicks have an average conversion rate of about 70-80%, we'll make sure that multiple websites state approximately the same fact before mentioning it on the show. We're never perfect, but we use the time we have to make sure we share correct information.
We interview our guests over Zoom but we have done some audio clips in person using Voice Memos.

We market our show entirely on social media (Instagram, Tik Tok, Twitter) but we find that publishing the podcast to a variety of different platforms definitely allows us to be more discoverable. We don't have a breakdown of acquisition sources but most of our link click throughs come from Instagram. We definitely have more access to interaction with fans through Instagram as well.

Don't give up! Even if you're 5 or 10 episodes in, you've made it a lot further than most folks that have an idea in their brain. And if it brings you and your co-host(s) joy, then it's all worth it even if you don't make any money or gain a huge following. And if your podcast truly brings value, then the following and downloads will come.
Another tidbit that I've learned is that you shouldn't be afraid to ask guests to come onto the podcast. It's not only a great way to get your episodes more exposure, but you get some fantastic perspectives on some topics that would've been more narrow-minded had it just been yourself or just you and your co-host.
I would say Reddit has a whole variety of resources on podcasting. Check out the r/podcasting or r/podcasts communities for some great starter guides.

Visit our all-in-one link here: https://beacons.ai/thesupersubspod
Website: https://thesupersubspod.weebly.com/
Instagram/Twitter/Tiktok/Youtube: @thesupersubspod
You can support us through the subscription link on our Spotify landing page here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thesupersubs