Sophomore men’s soccer defenders Bo Feekins and Aidan Ferguson have spent the last year creating soccer content for their individual YouTube channels. In order to develop their platforms, they are now joining forces and launching a podcast: “The Fifty Fifty Podcast.”
The podcast launched its first episode on September 27. It’s focused on professional soccer because it aligns with their YouTube content and personal interests.
The first two episodes of the podcast focused on England’s top division, the Premier League. Both men gave their views on topics such as who are the favorites for the title, how managers manage their clubs and how well newly acquired transfers will pan out at their new club.
The two sophomores embarked on their content creation journey in 2019, when Feekins began making appearances on Ferguson’s channel, The Fergie Time Podcast. After a while, Feekins started his own channel, Inside Arsenalwhich features content about his favorite club, Arsenal FC.
“Bo and I have been working on creative projects together for about a year now,” Ferguson said in an interview. “It all started with my YouTube channel. He would come and we would have debates about it… He then started his own YouTube channel.
Inside Arsenal has amassed 2,590 subscribers over the past year and The Fergie Time Podcast has amassed 2,510 subscribers since its inception in December 2018.
After working diligently over the past year, the two wanted to return to their roots and work on a project together.
“We knew for a while that we wanted to start doing something collaborative again,” Ferguson said. “We decided that starting a podcast on Spotify would be the best way to do something new together.”
To stand out from the rest of the football podcasts in the world, the two created a podcast where both can share their opinions on different professional football topics.
“It’s very much like a debate-style podcast,” Feekins said in an interview. “There are so many topics and arguments and debates to be had in the world of football, and that’s why our podcast really tries to delve into those arguments.”
Feekins said his plan is to release a new podcast every Saturday with a different debate topic.
“A big part of why we created this podcast is because when we walk to football practice or eat at the lunchroom, we’re always debating football topics,” Ferguson said . “It was just about taking what we already do and putting it on an audio platform.”
Feekins said finding topics to talk about wasn’t too difficult. Most importantly, they have a lot of fun along the way.
“Whether there’s a camera or a microphone on, we like to talk about the game,” Feekins said. “It’s not difficult for us to just push a button and put it online. At the end of the day, it’s just two friends who love football, talking about it, and then hopefully spreading it to other people who share the same passion for the game.”
Both men said they put a lot of effort into mastering their craft. Sophomore Connor Dang, Ferguson’s roommate and their teammate on the football team, said he saw how much time the two put into creating content.
“I’m in the room with Aidan whenever he’s working on his podcast or his own individual channel, and they’ve been working on it for a while,” Dang said in an interview. “I can see what’s happening, especially when I see him and Bo working together: going through their own process for recording their videos and making sure their scripts are correct, writing down the information they both want to talk about. while doing so in a timely manner. It also takes a lot of time and practice to get it all working properly.
Feekins and Ferguson’s content became a topic of discussion during team practices. Dang said conversations focused on professional leagues help build team chemistry.
“There are many training sessions, even during the year, where we discuss their content,” Dang said. “We talked a lot about them creating their own podcasts together, and the guys showed a lot of enthusiasm. And it’s certainly often the case that the videos themselves are discussed for about 30 minutes during practice simply because there’s a lot to cover.
Looking to the future, both men hope to continue to grow their individual platforms through podcasting and continue to release content for their supporters on YouTube.
“I’m very happy with where I am with my YouTube channel,” Feekins said. “Obviously, we also just started the podcast. I think the long term goals are just to build the platform more and more every day and create more diverse content from everything that already exists.
