The rise and rise of the Scottish podcast scene and its implications for media education in the UK

The demand and levels of engagement for sports podcasting remains at an all-time high in the UK, with many productions boasting hundreds of thousands of streams, downloads, clicks and shares per month (Hunter, 2024). In Scotland alone there are more than 50 football focused podcasts (Mahon, 2024) with Podbible (2021) referring to how a pandemic surge in creation and listenership was one of the driving forces towards a 166% rise in engagement including hubs around Glasgow and Edinburgh. To maintain professional currency, I stepped back from my work in national and international radio with RTE and BBC and along with joining ITV regions and ITN productions 3 years ago as a TV reporter decided to embrace this Scottish wave of football podcasting. After winning a Chartered Institute of Public Relations awards as a podcast producer and presenter for a university led series called Research Matters, I learned from those behind some of Scotland’s most streamed podcasts including the 10 million per annum downloaded Super Scoreboard. Through the carving out of a niche area of a congested market, I began profiling footballers with the shortest ever international careers called Dr James’s One Cap Wonders. In this presentation I will reflect on that journey from winning the CIPR award through to researching, producing and presenting and disseminating Dr James’s One Cap Wonders and demonstrate how engaging with elite former athletes in a media space where current and prospective journalism students already are, as content consumers, can enhance recruitment pathways and engagement amongst undergraduate cohorts. In addition, podcasting practice has a role to play in demonstrating industry connections and can influence pedagogical enhancement, echoing and building on previous AJE UK research by Canter and Wilkinson (2021).