October 9, 2025 • 45 mins
How do you measure, measure six years?
With 500 episodes, it appears. Today marks the 500th episode of The GIST of It, so co-hosts Ellen Hyslop and Steph Rotz are taking a trip down memory lane. Tune in as the gals reveal the most popular episode of all-time, plus share a few behind-the-scenes secrets on what really happens when they’re recording. Happy 500 to us!
Show notes:
Our most popular episodes
More on The GIST:
☎️ Leave us a voicemail! Call us at 1-437-564-5579 or hold down on this link
🎧 Subscribe: thegistsports.com/subscribepod
✉️ Email: pod@thegistsports.com
📷 Instagram: @thegistca @thegistusa
🐦 X: @thegistpod
With 500 episodes, it appears. Today marks the 500th episode of The GIST of It, so co-hosts Ellen Hyslop and Steph Rotz are taking a trip down memory lane. Tune in as the gals reveal the most popular episode of all-time, plus share a few behind-the-scenes secrets on what really happens when they’re recording. Happy 500 to us!
Show notes:
Our most popular episodes
- 2020: Episode #48: Everything you need to know about the 2020–21 NBA season
- 2021: Episode #118: Another coaching scandal: Jon Gruden and WFT explained
- 2022: Episode #152: A tale of three Olympians — Eileen Gu, Nathan Chen, Zhu Yi, and Beijing 2022
- 2023: Episode #235: Damar Hamlin updates & USMNT controversy
- 2024: Episode #381: Copa América chaos, PWHL Minnesota allegations, and an interview with soccer star Kristie Mewis
- 2025: Episode #458: Victim blaming & the Hockey Canada assault trial
More on The GIST:
☎️ Leave us a voicemail! Call us at 1-437-564-5579 or hold down on this link
🎧 Subscribe: thegistsports.com/subscribepod
✉️ Email: pod@thegistsports.com
📷 Instagram: @thegistca @thegistusa
🐦 X: @thegistpod
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Mama, We've made it. Welcome to the five hundredth episode
of The Gist of It. I cannot believe that we
are here. Today is Thursday, October ninth, and for the
five hundredth time, we're your co hosts. I'm Ellen Hisslop
and I'm step Rods. Oh my gosh. So it's our
five hundredth episode. So us and our production team we
(00:31):
decide to do something a little bit different today, and
with it being our five hundredth episode, we're going to
take a trip down memory lane. We want to start
by chatting about some of the most popular episodes of
The Gist of It by year, going all the way
back to twenty twenty when we started the podcast famously
not a great year to be starting a sports bookcast,
(00:52):
coming all the way up to twenty twenty five, and
then also have the space to kind of get into
our analysis of how the space has changed so much
since we launched the just in twenty eighteen, but also
now that we have been doing the podcast for five
years since twenty twenty, what the podcasting landscape has been
like too. And I'll say in all of this and
(01:12):
we'll show you all out later. All of these ideas
are from our amazing community of listeners of gisters. Thanks
so much to everyone who DMed us, left us a voicemail,
emailed us. These are all of their ideas. And so
if there's anything that we're gonna do, we're gonna listen
to you and we're gonna do what you ask us to.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
So there's anything that that just does, it's listened to
its people m hm, and I love that. So we're
gonna get into all of that nitty gritty about the
podcast itself, but we're also going to leave some.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Space to just have some fun.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Yeah, keep things light, and we're gonna bring you into
how we've experienced the podcast in the last five years
and talk a little bit about our experience as co
hosts together for five whole years sorry, five hundred episodes
plus five years.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Boom.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Two things can happen at the same time.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Two things can be true. It's something I do love
to say.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Yes, we also have some exciting announcements throughout this episode,
so please stay tuned. And I feel like this is
perfect timing stuff for us to be having a little
bit more of an evergreen episode, if you will, because
so much is happening right now in the sports world
that is really hard for us to actually report on
it as we speak. So we're recording on Wednesday, October eighth.
(02:29):
As we speak, there are three elimination games in Major
League Baseball. Can't believe that's all happening. On the same
night we have Game three of the WNBA Finals back
in Phoenix. The NHL is now in full swing, if
we could say swing with the NHL, and so there's
so many sports happening actually as we are recording that
(02:51):
it just doesn't feel right for us to be able
to respond to it for the Thursday podcast.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
You make a really really good point, and speaking of
evergreen content and speaking of listening to the Gist service,
oh and leaning into the community that the Gist has built,
I do feel like now is a perfect time to
call an audible and to share something else that we
can celebrate. We're talking about the five hundred episode, but
we're also talking about something new for the Gist.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
It's something so new. Steph, thank you so much for
teeming up. So we're calling it Audible today to talk
about something that we launched on Wednesday, called the Gist Plus,
which is essentially our new paid membership and community program
that is really all about rewriting the Internet and creating
a safe and inclusive space for underserved sports fans to
(03:42):
be able to enjoy and celebrate their fandom in a
really different way. And so that means a lot of things,
which Steph will get into it a little bit more
in terms of the nitty gritty, But when I think
about the gist of it in our podcast listeners, I
think that it would be perfect for all of you.
I don't know, step you tell me, would it be
helpful to kind of go through why we're launching the
(04:03):
Just Plus getting into some of the nitty gritty What
do you think?
Speaker 2 (04:08):
I'm going to come at it from a kind of
an outsider because I'm not a full timer, so I
get the news slightly before everyone else and I get
to react to it before it goes fully live. And
what I really like about the Just Plus is you
guys started this community in this platform again so long ago,
and at the beginning and for a long time, I
(04:30):
would say that the comments and everything on social media.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
Was such a safe space.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
It was the one place you could go where people
weren't saying this woman needs to go make me a
sandwich instead of played basketball. But I would say, as
you guys have grown, which is fantastic, and you've reached
so many new audiences. There are some little trickles here
and there, not a lot about you know, the things
that men love to say to women who like sports
talk about sports, and so to me, the just plus
(04:57):
is this completely safe space where you know, you are
just surrounded by other women who like sports and want
to talk about sports, and you're not going to get
those trolls interacting or interfering with your conversations and experiences
surrounding the world of sports.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Yeah. I love that. That's so interesting. From your side
of things, I'm always like, Okay, what are the justers
in the wild thinking? I think sef for a peak
behind the curtain. We launched the Gist in twenty eighteen
really to transform sports media into becoming a more inclusive
and accessible space within an industry that was always focused
on the avid male sports fan. The content we saw
(05:39):
on TV was mostly men playing sports. The people who
were sharing all of their sports news were mostly men
in suits, and we were like, okay, how can we
change this so that we are cultivating a new community
of female fans and underserve sports fans and making them
feel like sports are for them. How are we centering
diverse voice is? How are we actually providing equal coverage
(06:03):
on men's and women's sports? And so that was what
we set out to do in twenty eighteen, and I
feel like stuff from a business perspective and almost from
a okay, we had a point and we proved it perspective.
When we hit one million subscribers newsletter subscribers last year
was kind of like that moment where it was like,
we told you, so, you know what I mean, Like
this business and this idea makes sense and people want
(06:27):
it and also it's a viable business model. And so
when we hit that one million subscribers to those stuff,
Jac and I my co founder, and I and the
rest of our team kind of said, okay, now what
and what's next? And one thing, as you said, with us,
we literally are constantly listening to our audience and wanting
(06:47):
to hear from them, wanting to see how they're behaving,
all that sort of stuff. So since last September, we
have been tracking and like really analyzing all of our
DM all of our emails. We have been sending out surveys,
we have been looking at behaviors, and we've also been
hosting focus groups and one on one phone interviews to
(07:10):
also determine what's next. And what's been so clear in
all of that stuff is that justters have a great
relationship with the Gist as a brand, or us as
podcast hosts, whatever it may be, but they still lack
community in sports and oftentimes within their friend groups, still
feel like the only in their friend group, and they
(07:32):
really wanted to feel like they could have this sense
of community with other gisters because being in this just community,
or when you meet another gister, it's almost like a
blue check mark of like this person's legit and this
person potentially carries the same values that I do. And
so when we kind of looked at okay, it's not
just the coverage and the content and the POV, it's
(07:55):
also the community. That was such a light bulb moment
for us. But that light bulb moment completely came from
us speaking to all of our gisters.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
I really love that background info because as someone who
completely resonates with that, I have very few close friends
that love sports and love the teams, and there's certain
leagues that I follow avidly. If it wasn't for being
a part of the Just Slack, I would have nowhere
(08:26):
to turn to in these moments where I'm outraged or
excited and have people to talk to about all of
these things that I'm just like pulsing through my veins
and I need someone to talk to about. That's why
I'm so happy that this now will exist for people
like me and I'm sure people who are listening to
this podcast who will be able to create community with people.
Because also once we opened up our dms too, when
(08:46):
we're talking about the personal training Sash, I truly feel
that we need to create a space where all of
us like minded people can gather, yeah, whether that's digitally
or in person, and to really curate that space, like
you said, so it is a I'm talking just to register.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
This is a good faith conversation.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Yeah, good faith conversation. I like that, And so Steph too.
I think it's so interesting that you said that because
that kind of hits on two things that we found
through our phone interviews, and there was two things, really
is that they were looking for more of a community
around women's sports Reddit threads X. We're simply not cutting
it anymore. There's still so many trolls in the dungeon
(09:28):
waiting there for you. But also from a avid fandom
perspective to stuff, there were so many people who loved
their men's sports teams deeply or their women's sports teams deeply,
but only at that local level. So they might be
someone who's totally obsessed with the Colorado Avalanche steff, but
they might be the only one in their friend group
right now, and so they want to be able to
(09:48):
find other gisters that they can yap about the game with,
but also say, hey, do you want to go to
a game together? Like that would be so much fun.
And so we're talking about it right now from kind
of the like why we started it, why we feel
like there's needs to be this safe space on the internet,
why we're talking about creating the healthiest place honestly, I think,
(10:09):
on the Internet. And what really this the just plus
in this community comes down to is that we have
two different types of offerings that we are calling the Rookie
Tier as well as the All Star Tier. So the
Rookie Tier is only for ninety nine a month or
fifty dollars a year, if you decide to do it annual,
because you know, we love a deal. When you sign
(10:30):
up for the annual and on the Rookie Tier side
of things, Steph, you get access to our discord community,
which is already popping off and is so much fun.
I was just yapping about the Jays before this. You
also get monthly newsletter from us that no other newsletter
subscriber gets. Then you also get discounts to things within
the Just ecosystem. So that's everything that you get at
(10:52):
the Rookie Tier, and then at the All Star Tier
that's when shit starts to get serious. So the All
Star Tier is nine to ninety nine a month or
dollars a year, again pretty good. And with the All
Star Tier you get everything within the Rookie Tier, but
then you also get two podcasts a month additional that
regular podcasters don't get. So for everybody listening who potentially
(11:16):
wants more athlete interviews or business forward interviews or just
a different take or a deep dive on something, you
can get that through the GIS Plus and the All
Star Tier. Another piece with the All Star Tier stuff
is that we were working so hard to create perks
for all of our new Just plus members, and so
(11:36):
we have partnered with clubs like Gotham, We've partnered with
the New York Giants, we have partnered with the Boston Bruins,
We are soon to be partners with the PWHL, with
the Toronto Tempo. With all of these different teams and
all of these major markets. So the Colorado Avalanche, like
the list continues as well as at the majority of
(11:57):
women's sports bars around the country. And so when you're
an All Star, you get either ticket discounts or early
access or two for one codes, whatever it is, from
all of these different partners. And so it could be
that they're in your area or you're traveling to their area.
All of those perks are for you when you have
that All Star tier as well. So that was something
(12:20):
that we thought was pretty cool and that we worked
really hard at getting together too.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
I'm so excited.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Yeah wow. And the idea with that really too, is Steph,
is that you could say, Okay, let us both use
our twenty percent off to go to an ABS game together.
You know what I mean, why wouldn't we do that?
I didn't have someone to do that with before, but
now we can both do so together.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
It's so fun Because did you mention this already. There's
a discord channel. Yes, yes, so you can quite literally connect.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
And explain discord if if Steph, because I was like
discord or Slack, discorder slack, but the majority of gisters
said that they want a discord over slack.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
I'm not gonna lie to you, Ellen. The only I
used disco prior to this was trying to find a vaccine.
There was a vaccine hunters.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Discord and can't wait.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
That's hilarious.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
That was tracking because at the time the government was
doing all these pop ups for certain people in certain areas.
So I was in a discord only for that and
I completely forgot about it until I logged in again
today to get access to the just plus it was like, oh, yeah,
that exists. So to me, discord is just like a
more organized Slack essentially.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Yeah, And if people don't know Slack, it's basically like
a massive it's an organized group chat. It's a massive
organized channels with and when we say channels, it would
be within your group chat. There's a group chatting about
the WNBA finals. Today, there's a group chatting about the
Yankees game there's a group chat about whatever, and then
there's yeah, the Blue Jays, and then there's a group
(13:44):
chatting about Bravo. You know. Like so it's organized chaos.
I would say it's organized chats. So anyway, we've chatted
for a very long time. I'm so sorry on the
just plus with this callin audible, but I am like
podcast listeners, this feels like totally up your alley, and
if you have any questions about it, dm us, it.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Does really feel totally up your alley, guys, So I
do hope that you appreciate the at length description.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
This episode of The Gist of It is brought to
you by Amazon Business. When you're in a business like ours,
the sports analogies fly fast and furious. Take me, for example,
as the co founder of the Gist, I'm like the
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all ensuring everyone is working efficiently. That's why I love
Amazon Business. Their smart business buying tools make it easy
(14:33):
to find and purchase company necessities quickly, giving my team
time to focus on leveling the playing field. To learn more,
visit business dot Amazon dot com today. Okay, so the
bulk of what we are going to talk about is
(14:55):
sharing our most popular episodes year over year, starting with
the Just In twenty twenty. Before we do that, though,
we wanted to shout out just a handful of people
who message us and who gave us all of these
wonderful ideas. We wouldn't be able to come up with
them ourselves. So a pal named.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Aaron, Aaron M Aaron two aerons.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Some thing's with Aaron's in the water for the gist
of it, we love it. Aaron M, Aaron E, Randy, Leah,
Lorna Cali or Kaylee shep another Kaylee Kaylee. We're just
We're all over the place and just thank you all
so much for providing us your ideas. I'm sure that
(15:39):
we miss some people too. We're so sorry, but thank
you for providing us all of your ideas. All of
this is in today's episode because of you all.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
Yeah, shout out Buffalo Aeronie.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Someone shown up Buffalo stuff goes.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
My girl, My girl, My girl? Like was lame?
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Just I've over the border and go to Bill's game, baby, right,
wouldn't that be so fun? There's one person I was
chatting with on the Just plus today that lives a
province really close to me who plays golf, and I
was like, we're playing golf next time. OK, let's do
it anyway, Let's go through the most popular episodes by year.
And I think that this is so funny because I
(16:18):
love a look back, and it's so funny looking at
what we were talking about in twenty twenty and what
was the most popular in comparison to now. So in
twenty twenty, the episode that was the most popular was
episode forty eight, and it was everything you need to
know about the twenty twenty twenty one NBA season. And
I was so confused because the NBA isn't always within
(16:40):
our top picks.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
I would say a lot of these actually shocked me. Yeah,
there's a couple that makes sense in a couple that.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
Do feel a bit random to me.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
But when we talk about what was the actual content
of each episode, it might click a little bit more so.
This particular episode aired on December sixteenth, twenty twenty, and
which is again a weird timing when we're talking about
everything you need to know about the season. But the
NBA was about to tip off after it was postponed
(17:09):
to do the COVID nineteen pandemic. Then I'm sure all
of us forgot about right and there were a ton
of new rules because of COVID, and so I do
feel like that is what makes sense is we were
all locked into how is the season even going to happen?
Speaker 1 (17:22):
And we knew the NBA was effectively the league that
shut the world down, in my opinion, the microphone, even
just the sports worlds, like the world, the NBA essentially
shut it down and said, okay, we need to stop this.
They played their games in the bubble. I was going
to say the bubble that was the WNBA, But they
played their games in the bubble that summer, and then
(17:43):
this was the season after the bubble season. And what
was interesting about this two stuff is that Toronto, being
the only team in Canada, played their home games in Tampa,
Florida because they couldn't keep on going across the border.
So that's the type of stuff that we were talking
about in twenty twenty, was like, how the fuck are
we going to watch sports and enjoy them anymore?
Speaker 3 (18:03):
It was it was.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
It was a wild time, a wild time.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
That's when I got on Discord for the first time.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
That's when Steff was starting to look for vaccines The
Vaccine Hunters are Us twenty twenty one. I did not
think that this is gonna be our top episode at all.
It was episode one hundred and eighteen, another coaching scandal
John Gruden and WFT explained. This was October fourteenth, twenty
twenty one. I love that, as WFT explained, because in
(18:30):
my mind when I first read this before we came
in to record the pod stuff, I was like, did
we mean NFT because NFTs were all the rage at
around that time, but we mean what the fuck? And
a WTF And that just is so on brand for
us and for me at that time, because I don't
think Steph it was fully until at least the very
(18:52):
end of twenty twenty one. We're in twenty twenty two
where we had help on the production side with the podcast.
At the beginning, it was literally me producing the show notes,
you thoroughly reviewing, fact checking the show notes, us recording together,
and then me editing the podcast. Literally we youtubed everything
(19:12):
for how do we host a podcast, how do we
make the mics work? How do we do all this
sort of stuff? And so I'm going to give us
some grace on that spelling air.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
It is really a good example too of how far
we've come in the sense that truly you carried us
on your back, Ellen for so long.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Well, you still work a full time job. I was
trying to make this my full time job. We weren't
making any money at that point, and so you just
have to do it. You have to do right. You
have to learn all these things before you can hire
someone else to do them.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
And now we have multiple producers and an editor, and
it is really important, I think, to take stock of
those moments, and I think that this is a perfect
example of that. So for this particular WTF not WFT
podcast for those who are blissfully unaware, John was the
coach of the Las Vegas Raiders. The New York Times
(20:04):
release seven years worth of emails from Gruden where he
made racist and homophobic remarks. Gruden did win a Super
Bowl with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in two thousand and two,
left the NFL to be an analyst with ESPN for
eight years, and then returned to the league to coach
the Raiders in twenty eighteen, and he resigned by October
twenty first of this year, and again we aired this
(20:26):
on October fourteenth of twenty twenty.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
One, not twenty twenty one. Yes, yeah, yes, yes. And
John Gruden, I don't know, before the scandal, more of
a legend and personality in the NFL, So this was
a really big deal. He's currently employed by Barstool Sports,
and we're just going to leave that period in twenty
twenty one. Let's talk twenty twenty two. This is fun.
(20:51):
The episode that got a lot of downloads was episode
one fifty two, A Tale of Three Olympians Eileen Goo,
Nathan Chen zu Ye and Beijing twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Another moment in time when everything was so different than
where we are now in terms of how everything operated.
So this aired on February seventeenth, twenty twenty two, and
it was the final episode covering the twenty twenty two
Beijing Olympics. Is this the year that we did an
episode today or was that the following Olympics?
Speaker 1 (21:22):
I can't remember.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
For the I can't remember. I can't remember because.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
There was also Tokyo before Beijing. I think we might
have done it every day for Tokyo, Okay, but not Beijing.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
Either way, very interesting Olympics to cover, and this was
the Games where Russian figure skater Camilla Valiva was embroiled
in a doping scandal. That's this Olympics. And of course
the Olympics are always political. We all know that, all
of us gisters on this on this chat, but these
games were particularly pretty political.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Yeah. So all three of the athletes who we mentioned
are Chinese American and at that time they'd come to
represent the geopolitical tensions that were overhauling the Games, and
so we really I think took space to have some
discourse around that and to discuss what Beijing was like
(22:15):
and also how it was for all three of those
athletes too to.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
Be at these Olympics in particular.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
Yeah. So twenty twenty two we finally said farewell to
COVID I think by the end of that year slash
early twenty twenty three, which was so nice, and I think, Steph,
this is where I start to remember our podcast a
little bit more.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
I was gonna say, this has started to come into it.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
It's a little bit more like you're in one of
those binoculars where you can start to see everything become
less fuzzy.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
And I think to twenty twenty three, at some point,
we started recording twice a year. Sorry, we started recording
twice a week.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Imagine twice a year. That how many years we have
to record? Yeah, five hundred yeah, yeah, So.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
We started recording twice a week. So this was our
very first episodeisode of twenty twenty three. And whether or
not you're an NFL fan, Damar Hamlin his name probably
sounds familiar to you because his story was everywhere. He
was a safety for the Buffalo Bills, which is a
defensive position, and Hamlin suffered a cardiac arrest on the
(23:17):
field during Monday Night Football in primetime. He ultimately recovered
and is still playing with the Bills today, and it's
so great to see him out there. But it's hard
to overstate how scary this was and how it happened
and when it happened. And still people talk about Damar
Hamlin today based off of what happened to him early
(23:40):
twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
And I think this was one of those times too
where something like this really did spark. I think a
lot of debate within us on the podcast in this
community about the safety in the NFL and what needs
to be done to make it a safer sport. And
this particular episode was two thirty five. It was Damar
Hamlin updates and US men's national soccer team controversy.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Yeah, so it was a so harder And in that
men's controversy, we also covered an emerging story about then
head coach Craig Burholtz, who is being investigated by US
Soccer following the twenty twenty two World Cup. This was
such a dramatic time for the US men's national team
and it all boils down to some serious issues between
bur Halter and a player on the team, go Reina,
(24:25):
who was supposed to be a breakout star for the
Americans but spent most of the World Cup on the bench,
and a lot of people were like, dude, what the
hell could we have actually played so much better and
advanced so much further if we actually played Rena and
the way that we were supposed to. The details are sorted,
they get really quite nasty. We're not going to get
(24:47):
into them, but if you want to go back and
listen to it episode two thirty five.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
And that brings us to twenty twenty four episode three
eighty one, Copa America Chaos, PWHL Minnesota allegations and an
interview with soccer.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
Sorry Christy mwis.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
What a fucking random podcast? Like, are we okay?
Speaker 3 (25:05):
So many headlines?
Speaker 1 (25:07):
One of so many headlines? I think we were like, yeah,
that podcast, seo, we got to make sure we get
all the information in there, which I don't know how
it all works. Maybe that's still thing.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
I mean it was one of the top podcasts, so maybe.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
The top podcast.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
There you go.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Yeah, this one really surprised me that this was in
our top pods.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
I would agree.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
It aired on July sixteenth, twenty twenty four, and again
it was a three parter, so the first part Copa
America Lionel Messi seriously injured his ankle in Argentina's one
nil win over Columbia, and then the final and this
was just like one bit of the drama.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
The match began over an hour late.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Oh yes, bands were literally breaking into hard rock stadium
in Miami.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
Do you remember this now?
Speaker 1 (25:50):
Okay, now I remember this. This was a huge deal.
Now I'm less surprised that this was one of our
top podcasts because this was also when we started getting
into the conversation set because people were climbing fences, knocking
over security guards, people were trampled. There was amazing no
one was seriously hurt. We started having conversations in this
episode about, Okay, does America actually know how to handle
(26:14):
soccer fans, because to be clear, this is nothing new,
i'd say in the soccer world outside of North America.
If you look at South America, if you look at Europe,
their security, their sanctions are very different because soccer fans
go wild. And so we started having the conversation then
stuff of is North America ready to host a World Cup?
(26:35):
Because these are potentially the type of fans that are
going to be trying to enjoy the game that they're
used to enjoying the game wherever they're from. So that
was very interesting.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
And then for the PWHL part of this podcast, we
talked about the allegations that PWHL Minnesota was facing at
the time. So Minnesota won the inaugural the first PWHL season,
and then shortly after that the team was accused of
fostering a toxic work culture and general manager Natalie Darwitz
was dismissed. It was quite it was quite a tumultuous time,
(27:10):
i would say, and it was so it was so
fresh after the win and then for summer yeah, fuchs
about it.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Yeah, And then poor Christy Mwis, We were like, do
you mind just being at the end of this podcast?
You know what I mean? What were we thinking? Christy
mwis wants to come on the pod?
Speaker 3 (27:27):
Christy mwis is coming on the pod?
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Now? She's a mommy mama Sida No way, yeah. Her
and Sam Kerr so sweet, right perfect? I know, so sweet? Okay?
And that brings us to twenty twenty five. Episode four
fifty eight has been the most popular so far. This
one titled Victim Blaming in the Hockey Canada Assault Trial.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
This aired May eighth of this year, twenty twenty five,
and probably pretty safe to say that this is, if
not one of the hardest episodes that the entire team
had to produce of all time. In this episode, we
covered the latest updates at the time from the courtroom
in the Hockey Canada assault trial and shared our many
(28:10):
thoughts for why we thought perhaps this might be a
turning point in the Hockey Canada chapter and all of
this just disgustingness that comes out of hockey culture. But
now five months later, all five hockey players who were
on trial have been found not guilty and just really
(28:31):
underscores why we do what we do.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Yeah, and reinstated by the league who is asked to
do so by the team. So anyway, not the best
update since May so thank you all so much for
going down that trip down memory lane. It's so interesting
to see what we were talking about at sports in
any given year. I can only imagine looking back at
a radio show or TV show that's been on since
(28:55):
the nineties, like Part of the Interruption is one of
my favorite TV shows ever. They've turned and their TV
show into a podcast. The stories that they probably have
from the two thousands to now and how they look back,
I would I would love to hear an episode like
this from them before we kind of head into our
personal training Sesson, which is from one of one of
our listeners. Still a question we wanted to reminisce on,
(29:18):
like some some kooky things that have happened either behind
the scenes or just on the pod in general.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Someone I think it was we got a couple requests
to go over some of the bloopers in the behind
the scenes of the podcast, and so many of those
bloopers I think I joked in response via DM, it's
just going to be me pronouncing people's names wrong, like.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Just about to say y'all. Steph pronounces I think almost
every name wrong.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
Yeah yeah, I try my best, and I will before
an episode go on YouTube learn how to say a
person's name, think it, say it out loud to myself,
and then when we hit record, I say it wrong
and Ellen goes, okay, read do it pause, We.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
Do it pause. I think my favorite was when we
were talking about Canadian swimmer and Olympic medalist Maggie McNeil
and you somehow spelt you, somehow said McNeil wrong, and
I was like, okay, but I didn't even know how
to respond. It's like, what where are we just glitch?
Speaker 2 (30:22):
And I thought she was frozen and then I did
something wrong.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
Yeah. No, that was fun.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
There are so many times this year, though, that I
almost had a very very serious blooper, and that is
I almost announced on the podcast a very big, big
piece of news because I was privy to this information,
and then it would have leaked to our podcast editor,
and then the editor maybe would have talked to the
team at large any who. It was really hard for
(30:50):
me to keep this particular secret.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
You can share it.
Speaker 3 (30:53):
Can I share it?
Speaker 1 (30:54):
You can share it.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
So I did learn earlier this year that Ellen is pregnant,
and then I had to continuously remember that it's private
information and that I can't share it on the podcast,
and it was so difficult. You guys, I am terrible
at keeping secrets. And I'm so excited, and I hope
everyone else is so excited.
Speaker 3 (31:14):
Aunt, and he's a a girl.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
We're having a girl in January. It was so fun
getting to tell your stuff, because A, you are so
shocked and so excited and so cute. But then every
week you were like, have you told more people? Who
can I talk to about this? Have you told more people?
And the more people that I told that were also
friends with you, you were like, and thank goodness, now
I will be texting Michelle, and when are you telling
the team? Okay, So when we finally told the Just team,
(31:39):
which was about I don't know, three weeks ago now
or something like that, you were like, finally, And then
we've just been slowly telling people and letting the world know.
So we're having a baby girl, expecting her at the
end of January, which is so wild and so exciting
and we're really thrilled, but we're also so scared. I'm
(32:00):
so nervous and have truly no idea what we're doing,
but we're so excited.
Speaker 3 (32:05):
You're gonna be such a good mom.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
And also to all of those listening, no, she didn't
plan an athlete baby in the January.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
Just happened like.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
That, because there's that theory, right that if you're born
in the first how long is the first month, the
first two months of the year.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
I think it's kind of the first quarter, like five
months vibes, but the first quarter is.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
Money is money because they are developing and growing faster
than everyone else in there for more likely to be
a pro athlete.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
That was not part of the plan. It was just
happy happenstance.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
No exactly. I think that there was a book written
on that. And then I think Serena Williams and Lebron
James said, hold my beer. Serena famously a lebra, Lebron
famously born in December. So I think that that really
debunked everything. The time of year. It's really all about
genetics and athletics as a baby. But yeah, thank you, Steph.
It was so fun telling you early on and I
(32:56):
really appreciate you keeping this secret for honestly three months
at least at least it probably felt really long to you.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
It felt really long, yeah, because then to other people
I had like a coworker, and now everyone knows tell
me in private as well. I was just like, people
have to stop telling me because I want to blab,
but my ethics will not allow me. Three cheers for
Amazon Business for sponsoring this podcast. Remember the days before
online shopping, we're spoiled in the best way, especially when
(33:27):
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(33:48):
dot com for more. That's business dot Amazon dot com
for more. Already rue, it's time for our personal training session,
the last segment of the podcast, and in honor of
the five hundredth episode, today's session is going to be
a little bit different. It's a little bit more of
(34:09):
a history lesson focused on the changes that we have
seen since we've started the podcast, which is such an
amazing sentence to be able to say, especially since so
much of this is going to be focused on women's.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
Sports, women's sports and the female fan, And this idea
came from Buffalo, Aaron, So thank you Buffalo Aeron. They said,
for the five hundredth episode, you could do a segment
about the changes you've seen in women's sports, your growth
and opportunities since starting the pod, or address areas you
would have thought made more progress, if that's more applicable.
(34:45):
Congrats on five hundred. Love the pod and the newsletters.
Ps I love in Buffalo and love the showouts.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
Shut out Aaron.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
So there's a lot of different facts and fun facts
in here that we want to get to. I want to,
I think zoom out those steph first and paint the
picture a little bit of where we were at with
the gist in twenty seventeen and twenty eighteen, we were
in twenty twenty, and now where we are in twenty
twenty five.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
Please.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
When we came up with the idea for the Gist
in twenty seventeen, it felt very novel, very fun. We
were getting a lot of great feedback from our audience.
We launched an earnest in twenty eighteen, once we got
accepted into an incubator program actually with Facebook t through
the Facebook Journalist and Projects. We were one of five
companies selected across Canada to be part of this, and
(35:36):
so we quit our jobs. We decided to go all
in on the GIST. And what was so interesting Steph,
is that in twenty eighteen, as much as Facebook kind
of gave their stamp of approval on the idea for
the Gist and everything that we talked about at the
top of the pod, what we stand for, what we
were going to do, so many people did not get it.
The amount of knows that we received when we were
(35:58):
trying to money for the GIST around why do things
need to be different for a next generation fan? What
do you mean there's a bigger opportunity with female fans.
They're not watching, they're not buying in the same way.
What do you mean we need to be putting more
women's sports on TV or we need to be providing
equal coverage on women's sports. I don't agree they're not
(36:20):
driving revenue. That that was truly what we were coming
up against in twenty eighteen every single day, and I
think stef from a podcast perspective, we dealt with that
sometimes too. You had some hand comments.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Oh one of like I truly felt like I made
it in the podcasting worm, which is a little bit
of a joke. Trust me, I'm being funny. When I
started to get some men commenting, shut your mouth up.
I don't want to ever hear you speak about hockey ever, again,
I screenshotted all of them and just kept them in
a little older to smile at, like one person being like,
(36:59):
what do you know about hockey culture? Have you ever
even been in a dressing room? So clearly these people
haven't listened to the podcast because guests, I've been in
dressing rooms before, locker rooms, if you will.
Speaker 3 (37:09):
And yeah, I thought to myself, men are mad at me.
This is fantastic. I'm doing this is great.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
We're doing something right in the world. So that's kind
of what we experienced at the beginning of the just
in the podcast stuff. I think in the early days
and then what has been so cool, I'd say, in
particular over the last two or three years, and I
think where we take so much pride in for us
as a business and for our entire team. And what
we've done with the Gist of it in our community
(37:36):
is that people in the industry, whether it's investors or
brands or team owners, leagues, what have you, they're starting
to recognize two things. Female fans hold a lot of
power and should not be ignored. And women's sports are
growing and you need to get on the rocket ship. Now.
(37:58):
It took a long time to get here, and hopefully
we were a part of that change. But i'd say
Steph the female fans side of things in us working
with the NFL, who wants to be able to connect
and grow with this type of fan. We hoped that
was on our radar when we started the GIST and
that was our goal, but who knew if that was
actually going to happen. And now people are really starting
(38:19):
to take women in the serious way that they need
to be taken seriously. Same with women's sports. When we
Steph started covering the podcast in twenty twenty, we were
one of the only news podcasts that was covering pre PWHL,
the WNBA, and the wubble. What was happening with the NWSL,
(38:40):
like it was such a different space and people like
craved that so much, and now we have all of
these different women's sports podcasts, we have all of these
different women's sports companies. The growth of women's rugby and
soccer and everything like that is just so remarkable that
the conversations in the space has just changed so much.
It's actually mind blowing. And it's still going up into
(39:01):
the right.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
Okay, so let's put some numbers to that.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
Ellen mentioned that just started prior to twenty nineteen, but
we started the podcast in twenty twenty, so this is
a stack coming from twenty nineteen. In twenty nineteen, less
than six percent of coverage was of women's sports, and
now in twenty twenty five, it's projected that women's sports
will account for twenty percent of all sports coverage. That
is a massive jump, and I.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
Want to put an asterisk beside that step. In twenty nineteen,
it was also a world in a space where we
were still relying on traditional channels and media to consume sports,
So we were thinking about TV broadcasters, newspapers, traditional websites.
Fast forward to twenty twenty five, what's the way we
all get our news? Newsletters, social media, podcast you get
(39:46):
everything through your phone because of technology and because of
the way it's democratized, the way that people are able
to share information, we are able to put out content
that people actually will enjoy in a different way and
finding these niche but not so niche anymore communities, and
so there's a huge technology play in this too.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
So those numbers were brought to you by Wasserman's The Collective.
A study done by McKenzie showed that fifty seven percent
of women's sports fans have become fans within the last
five years. So that's the duration we've been doing the podcast. Yeah,
fantastic to think about it.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
So it's really so exciting. I think to Aaron's question
of places where you think that there would be more progress,
I'm thrilled at the progress we've seen. I actually am
so so happy. I am someone that's always wanting more
and looking for more, and I think that's what we're
trying to do at the GIST, to say more and
more and more and actually push it. But those two
(40:47):
statistics rate alone, stuff from a women's sports perspective are huge.
Another thing that just came out today from or yesterday
from our friend Caroline Fitzgerald at Goals, who has an
amazing podcast herself. She also writes for Forbes, and she
did an interview with this company called crowd i Q,
which uses this like I don't know, cool ai and
(41:07):
things like that to assess venues in fans and venues
for the younger generation stuff. So basically, anybody, I think
it was forty and under, who is attending and enjoying
thank you? Who is attending and enjoying men's sports? The
fans are fifty to fifty, And so their big takeaway
from this crowdug Que report is that the barrier that
(41:32):
once was there for female fans to enjoy men's sports
is starting to close. And within that same breath, Nielsen
has always said the most unprecedented growth is the female
fan in sports, and so we're starting to see that
in really tangible ways of how women are beginning to
feel more and more comfortable in these men's sports spaces
(41:56):
and places. And I think a part of that is
because there's Q communities, there's shows, there's the gist, there's
maybe the Taylor Swift effect that has finally allowed so
many people to say, oh, this is for me too,
and this product on the ice or on the field
is amazing and I want to enjoy it just the same,
and so I love seeing those types of statistics as well.
Speaker 2 (42:17):
I wholeheartedly believe that because I can even speak to
that anecdotically. Knowing that the PWHL exists also has made
it so much easier for me to assert myself from
a hockey standpoint in any hockey environment. I like that
because I'm like, don't play with me like we're we
are the real deal. We are just as much a
fan or just as much an athlete as you are.
Speaker 1 (42:38):
I love that. And with that mic drop, thank you
all so much for five hundred episodes. We have had
the best time over the last five years. Steph, thank
you so much for putting up with me for five
hund and for your continued friendship. I truly look forward
to our recordings so much, and part of that is
when I'm on leave for Maturnity, like, I'll probably only
(43:00):
be able to be away from the pod for a
month because I'm like, I need to be able to
see stuff. We need to be able to Yeah, And
so thank you so much, and thanks to our amazing
team of producers too and editors who just make the
gist of it happen every single week.
Speaker 2 (43:18):
Yeah, and even if you are gone for a period
of time, I'm sure just will be very supportive and
right there ready for you.
Speaker 3 (43:24):
To come back. And yes, I'm so excited for a
little baby Ellen in the world. Oh boy, I know
you have a partner, but we don't know him.
Speaker 1 (43:33):
He's not growing him. No. So that marks the end
of today's episode. Thank y'all so much for tuning in.
We'll be back in your feed with a new podcast
next Thursday because we are observing Canadian Thanksgiving on Monday
and my sister's getting married this weekend. So in the meantime,
if you enjoy this episode, we'd love for you to rate, review,
and subscribe.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
This episode was edited by Savannah Held and produced by
Lisa Minnutillo, Alessandra Puccio and Lauren Tuscla.
Speaker 3 (44:00):
And I'm Steph Rots and
Speaker 1 (44:01):
I'm Ellen his Lap And we'll chat with you again
on Thursday for five hundredth and first episode.
Mama, We've made it. Welcome to the five hundredth episode
of The Gist of It. I cannot believe that we
are here. Today is Thursday, October ninth, and for the
five hundredth time, we're your co hosts. I'm Ellen Hisslop
and I'm step Rods. Oh my gosh. So it's our
five hundredth episode. So us and our production team we
(00:31):
decide to do something a little bit different today, and
with it being our five hundredth episode, we're going to
take a trip down memory lane. We want to start
by chatting about some of the most popular episodes of
The Gist of It by year, going all the way
back to twenty twenty when we started the podcast famously
not a great year to be starting a sports bookcast,
(00:52):
coming all the way up to twenty twenty five, and
then also have the space to kind of get into
our analysis of how the space has changed so much
since we launched the just in twenty eighteen, but also
now that we have been doing the podcast for five
years since twenty twenty, what the podcasting landscape has been
like too. And I'll say in all of this and
(01:12):
we'll show you all out later. All of these ideas
are from our amazing community of listeners of gisters. Thanks
so much to everyone who DMed us, left us a voicemail,
emailed us. These are all of their ideas. And so
if there's anything that we're gonna do, we're gonna listen
to you and we're gonna do what you ask us to.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
So there's anything that that just does, it's listened to
its people m hm, and I love that. So we're
gonna get into all of that nitty gritty about the
podcast itself, but we're also going to leave some.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Space to just have some fun.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Yeah, keep things light, and we're gonna bring you into
how we've experienced the podcast in the last five years
and talk a little bit about our experience as co
hosts together for five whole years sorry, five hundred episodes
plus five years.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Boom.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Two things can happen at the same time.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Two things can be true. It's something I do love
to say.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Yes, we also have some exciting announcements throughout this episode,
so please stay tuned. And I feel like this is
perfect timing stuff for us to be having a little
bit more of an evergreen episode, if you will, because
so much is happening right now in the sports world
that is really hard for us to actually report on
it as we speak. So we're recording on Wednesday, October eighth.
(02:29):
As we speak, there are three elimination games in Major
League Baseball. Can't believe that's all happening. On the same
night we have Game three of the WNBA Finals back
in Phoenix. The NHL is now in full swing, if
we could say swing with the NHL, and so there's
so many sports happening actually as we are recording that
(02:51):
it just doesn't feel right for us to be able
to respond to it for the Thursday podcast.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
You make a really really good point, and speaking of
evergreen content and speaking of listening to the Gist service,
oh and leaning into the community that the Gist has built,
I do feel like now is a perfect time to
call an audible and to share something else that we
can celebrate. We're talking about the five hundred episode, but
we're also talking about something new for the Gist.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
It's something so new. Steph, thank you so much for
teeming up. So we're calling it Audible today to talk
about something that we launched on Wednesday, called the Gist Plus,
which is essentially our new paid membership and community program
that is really all about rewriting the Internet and creating
a safe and inclusive space for underserved sports fans to
(03:42):
be able to enjoy and celebrate their fandom in a
really different way. And so that means a lot of things,
which Steph will get into it a little bit more
in terms of the nitty gritty, But when I think
about the gist of it in our podcast listeners, I
think that it would be perfect for all of you.
I don't know, step you tell me, would it be
helpful to kind of go through why we're launching the
(04:03):
Just Plus getting into some of the nitty gritty What
do you think?
Speaker 2 (04:08):
I'm going to come at it from a kind of
an outsider because I'm not a full timer, so I
get the news slightly before everyone else and I get
to react to it before it goes fully live. And
what I really like about the Just Plus is you
guys started this community in this platform again so long ago,
and at the beginning and for a long time, I
(04:30):
would say that the comments and everything on social media.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
Was such a safe space.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
It was the one place you could go where people
weren't saying this woman needs to go make me a
sandwich instead of played basketball. But I would say, as
you guys have grown, which is fantastic, and you've reached
so many new audiences. There are some little trickles here
and there, not a lot about you know, the things
that men love to say to women who like sports
talk about sports, and so to me, the just plus
(04:57):
is this completely safe space where you know, you are
just surrounded by other women who like sports and want
to talk about sports, and you're not going to get
those trolls interacting or interfering with your conversations and experiences
surrounding the world of sports.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Yeah. I love that. That's so interesting. From your side
of things, I'm always like, Okay, what are the justers
in the wild thinking? I think sef for a peak
behind the curtain. We launched the Gist in twenty eighteen
really to transform sports media into becoming a more inclusive
and accessible space within an industry that was always focused
on the avid male sports fan. The content we saw
(05:39):
on TV was mostly men playing sports. The people who
were sharing all of their sports news were mostly men
in suits, and we were like, okay, how can we
change this so that we are cultivating a new community
of female fans and underserve sports fans and making them
feel like sports are for them. How are we centering
diverse voice is? How are we actually providing equal coverage
(06:03):
on men's and women's sports? And so that was what
we set out to do in twenty eighteen, and I
feel like stuff from a business perspective and almost from
a okay, we had a point and we proved it perspective.
When we hit one million subscribers newsletter subscribers last year
was kind of like that moment where it was like,
we told you, so, you know what I mean, Like
this business and this idea makes sense and people want
(06:27):
it and also it's a viable business model. And so
when we hit that one million subscribers to those stuff,
Jac and I my co founder, and I and the
rest of our team kind of said, okay, now what
and what's next? And one thing, as you said, with us,
we literally are constantly listening to our audience and wanting
(06:47):
to hear from them, wanting to see how they're behaving,
all that sort of stuff. So since last September, we
have been tracking and like really analyzing all of our
DM all of our emails. We have been sending out surveys,
we have been looking at behaviors, and we've also been
hosting focus groups and one on one phone interviews to
(07:10):
also determine what's next. And what's been so clear in
all of that stuff is that justters have a great
relationship with the Gist as a brand, or us as
podcast hosts, whatever it may be, but they still lack
community in sports and oftentimes within their friend groups, still
feel like the only in their friend group, and they
(07:32):
really wanted to feel like they could have this sense
of community with other gisters because being in this just community,
or when you meet another gister, it's almost like a
blue check mark of like this person's legit and this
person potentially carries the same values that I do. And
so when we kind of looked at okay, it's not
just the coverage and the content and the POV, it's
(07:55):
also the community. That was such a light bulb moment
for us. But that light bulb moment completely came from
us speaking to all of our gisters.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
I really love that background info because as someone who
completely resonates with that, I have very few close friends
that love sports and love the teams, and there's certain
leagues that I follow avidly. If it wasn't for being
a part of the Just Slack, I would have nowhere
(08:26):
to turn to in these moments where I'm outraged or
excited and have people to talk to about all of
these things that I'm just like pulsing through my veins
and I need someone to talk to about. That's why
I'm so happy that this now will exist for people
like me and I'm sure people who are listening to
this podcast who will be able to create community with people.
Because also once we opened up our dms too, when
(08:46):
we're talking about the personal training Sash, I truly feel
that we need to create a space where all of
us like minded people can gather, yeah, whether that's digitally
or in person, and to really curate that space, like
you said, so it is a I'm talking just to register.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
This is a good faith conversation.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Yeah, good faith conversation. I like that, And so Steph too.
I think it's so interesting that you said that because
that kind of hits on two things that we found
through our phone interviews, and there was two things, really
is that they were looking for more of a community
around women's sports Reddit threads X. We're simply not cutting
it anymore. There's still so many trolls in the dungeon
(09:28):
waiting there for you. But also from a avid fandom
perspective to stuff, there were so many people who loved
their men's sports teams deeply or their women's sports teams deeply,
but only at that local level. So they might be
someone who's totally obsessed with the Colorado Avalanche steff, but
they might be the only one in their friend group
right now, and so they want to be able to
(09:48):
find other gisters that they can yap about the game with,
but also say, hey, do you want to go to
a game together? Like that would be so much fun.
And so we're talking about it right now from kind
of the like why we started it, why we feel
like there's needs to be this safe space on the internet,
why we're talking about creating the healthiest place honestly, I think,
(10:09):
on the Internet. And what really this the just plus
in this community comes down to is that we have
two different types of offerings that we are calling the Rookie
Tier as well as the All Star Tier. So the
Rookie Tier is only for ninety nine a month or
fifty dollars a year, if you decide to do it annual,
because you know, we love a deal. When you sign
(10:30):
up for the annual and on the Rookie Tier side
of things, Steph, you get access to our discord community,
which is already popping off and is so much fun.
I was just yapping about the Jays before this. You
also get monthly newsletter from us that no other newsletter
subscriber gets. Then you also get discounts to things within
the Just ecosystem. So that's everything that you get at
(10:52):
the Rookie Tier, and then at the All Star Tier
that's when shit starts to get serious. So the All
Star Tier is nine to ninety nine a month or
dollars a year, again pretty good. And with the All
Star Tier you get everything within the Rookie Tier, but
then you also get two podcasts a month additional that
regular podcasters don't get. So for everybody listening who potentially
(11:16):
wants more athlete interviews or business forward interviews or just
a different take or a deep dive on something, you
can get that through the GIS Plus and the All
Star Tier. Another piece with the All Star Tier stuff
is that we were working so hard to create perks
for all of our new Just plus members, and so
(11:36):
we have partnered with clubs like Gotham, We've partnered with
the New York Giants, we have partnered with the Boston Bruins,
We are soon to be partners with the PWHL, with
the Toronto Tempo. With all of these different teams and
all of these major markets. So the Colorado Avalanche, like
the list continues as well as at the majority of
(11:57):
women's sports bars around the country. And so when you're
an All Star, you get either ticket discounts or early
access or two for one codes, whatever it is, from
all of these different partners. And so it could be
that they're in your area or you're traveling to their area.
All of those perks are for you when you have
that All Star tier as well. So that was something
(12:20):
that we thought was pretty cool and that we worked
really hard at getting together too.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
I'm so excited.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Yeah wow. And the idea with that really too, is Steph,
is that you could say, Okay, let us both use
our twenty percent off to go to an ABS game together.
You know what I mean, why wouldn't we do that?
I didn't have someone to do that with before, but
now we can both do so together.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
It's so fun Because did you mention this already. There's
a discord channel. Yes, yes, so you can quite literally connect.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
And explain discord if if Steph, because I was like
discord or Slack, discorder slack, but the majority of gisters
said that they want a discord over slack.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
I'm not gonna lie to you, Ellen. The only I
used disco prior to this was trying to find a vaccine.
There was a vaccine hunters.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Discord and can't wait.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
That's hilarious.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
That was tracking because at the time the government was
doing all these pop ups for certain people in certain areas.
So I was in a discord only for that and
I completely forgot about it until I logged in again
today to get access to the just plus it was like, oh, yeah,
that exists. So to me, discord is just like a
more organized Slack essentially.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Yeah, And if people don't know Slack, it's basically like
a massive it's an organized group chat. It's a massive
organized channels with and when we say channels, it would
be within your group chat. There's a group chatting about
the WNBA finals. Today, there's a group chatting about the
Yankees game there's a group chat about whatever, and then
there's yeah, the Blue Jays, and then there's a group
(13:44):
chatting about Bravo. You know. Like so it's organized chaos.
I would say it's organized chats. So anyway, we've chatted
for a very long time. I'm so sorry on the
just plus with this callin audible, but I am like
podcast listeners, this feels like totally up your alley, and
if you have any questions about it, dm us, it.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Does really feel totally up your alley, guys, So I
do hope that you appreciate the at length description.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
This episode of The Gist of It is brought to
you by Amazon Business. When you're in a business like ours,
the sports analogies fly fast and furious. Take me, for example,
as the co founder of the Gist, I'm like the
team quarterback. I'm in charge of executing the company plan,
all ensuring everyone is working efficiently. That's why I love
Amazon Business. Their smart business buying tools make it easy
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to find and purchase company necessities quickly, giving my team
time to focus on leveling the playing field. To learn more,
visit business dot Amazon dot com today. Okay, so the
bulk of what we are going to talk about is
(14:55):
sharing our most popular episodes year over year, starting with
the Just In twenty twenty. Before we do that, though,
we wanted to shout out just a handful of people
who message us and who gave us all of these
wonderful ideas. We wouldn't be able to come up with
them ourselves. So a pal named.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Aaron, Aaron M Aaron two aerons.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Some thing's with Aaron's in the water for the gist
of it, we love it. Aaron M, Aaron E, Randy, Leah,
Lorna Cali or Kaylee shep another Kaylee Kaylee. We're just
We're all over the place and just thank you all
so much for providing us your ideas. I'm sure that
(15:39):
we miss some people too. We're so sorry, but thank
you for providing us all of your ideas. All of
this is in today's episode because of you all.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
Yeah, shout out Buffalo Aeronie.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Someone shown up Buffalo stuff goes.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
My girl, My girl, My girl? Like was lame?
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Just I've over the border and go to Bill's game, baby, right,
wouldn't that be so fun? There's one person I was
chatting with on the Just plus today that lives a
province really close to me who plays golf, and I
was like, we're playing golf next time. OK, let's do
it anyway, Let's go through the most popular episodes by year.
And I think that this is so funny because I
(16:18):
love a look back, and it's so funny looking at
what we were talking about in twenty twenty and what
was the most popular in comparison to now. So in
twenty twenty, the episode that was the most popular was
episode forty eight, and it was everything you need to
know about the twenty twenty twenty one NBA season. And
I was so confused because the NBA isn't always within
(16:40):
our top picks.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
I would say a lot of these actually shocked me. Yeah,
there's a couple that makes sense in a couple that.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
Do feel a bit random to me.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
But when we talk about what was the actual content
of each episode, it might click a little bit more so.
This particular episode aired on December sixteenth, twenty twenty, and
which is again a weird timing when we're talking about
everything you need to know about the season. But the
NBA was about to tip off after it was postponed
(17:09):
to do the COVID nineteen pandemic. Then I'm sure all
of us forgot about right and there were a ton
of new rules because of COVID, and so I do
feel like that is what makes sense is we were
all locked into how is the season even going to happen?
Speaker 1 (17:22):
And we knew the NBA was effectively the league that
shut the world down, in my opinion, the microphone, even
just the sports worlds, like the world, the NBA essentially
shut it down and said, okay, we need to stop this.
They played their games in the bubble. I was going
to say the bubble that was the WNBA, But they
played their games in the bubble that summer, and then
(17:43):
this was the season after the bubble season. And what
was interesting about this two stuff is that Toronto, being
the only team in Canada, played their home games in Tampa,
Florida because they couldn't keep on going across the border.
So that's the type of stuff that we were talking
about in twenty twenty, was like, how the fuck are
we going to watch sports and enjoy them anymore?
Speaker 3 (18:03):
It was it was.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
It was a wild time, a wild time.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
That's when I got on Discord for the first time.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
That's when Steff was starting to look for vaccines The
Vaccine Hunters are Us twenty twenty one. I did not
think that this is gonna be our top episode at all.
It was episode one hundred and eighteen, another coaching scandal
John Gruden and WFT explained. This was October fourteenth, twenty
twenty one. I love that, as WFT explained, because in
(18:30):
my mind when I first read this before we came
in to record the pod stuff, I was like, did
we mean NFT because NFTs were all the rage at
around that time, but we mean what the fuck? And
a WTF And that just is so on brand for
us and for me at that time, because I don't
think Steph it was fully until at least the very
(18:52):
end of twenty twenty one. We're in twenty twenty two
where we had help on the production side with the podcast.
At the beginning, it was literally me producing the show notes,
you thoroughly reviewing, fact checking the show notes, us recording together,
and then me editing the podcast. Literally we youtubed everything
(19:12):
for how do we host a podcast, how do we
make the mics work? How do we do all this
sort of stuff? And so I'm going to give us
some grace on that spelling air.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
It is really a good example too of how far
we've come in the sense that truly you carried us
on your back, Ellen for so long.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Well, you still work a full time job. I was
trying to make this my full time job. We weren't
making any money at that point, and so you just
have to do it. You have to do right. You
have to learn all these things before you can hire
someone else to do them.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
And now we have multiple producers and an editor, and
it is really important, I think, to take stock of
those moments, and I think that this is a perfect
example of that. So for this particular WTF not WFT
podcast for those who are blissfully unaware, John was the
coach of the Las Vegas Raiders. The New York Times
(20:04):
release seven years worth of emails from Gruden where he
made racist and homophobic remarks. Gruden did win a Super
Bowl with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in two thousand and two,
left the NFL to be an analyst with ESPN for
eight years, and then returned to the league to coach
the Raiders in twenty eighteen, and he resigned by October
twenty first of this year, and again we aired this
(20:26):
on October fourteenth of twenty twenty.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
One, not twenty twenty one. Yes, yeah, yes, yes. And
John Gruden, I don't know, before the scandal, more of
a legend and personality in the NFL, So this was
a really big deal. He's currently employed by Barstool Sports,
and we're just going to leave that period in twenty
twenty one. Let's talk twenty twenty two. This is fun.
(20:51):
The episode that got a lot of downloads was episode
one fifty two, A Tale of Three Olympians Eileen Goo,
Nathan Chen zu Ye and Beijing twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Another moment in time when everything was so different than
where we are now in terms of how everything operated.
So this aired on February seventeenth, twenty twenty two, and
it was the final episode covering the twenty twenty two
Beijing Olympics. Is this the year that we did an
episode today or was that the following Olympics?
Speaker 1 (21:22):
I can't remember.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
For the I can't remember. I can't remember because.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
There was also Tokyo before Beijing. I think we might
have done it every day for Tokyo, Okay, but not Beijing.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
Either way, very interesting Olympics to cover, and this was
the Games where Russian figure skater Camilla Valiva was embroiled
in a doping scandal. That's this Olympics. And of course
the Olympics are always political. We all know that, all
of us gisters on this on this chat, but these
games were particularly pretty political.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Yeah. So all three of the athletes who we mentioned
are Chinese American and at that time they'd come to
represent the geopolitical tensions that were overhauling the Games, and
so we really I think took space to have some
discourse around that and to discuss what Beijing was like
(22:15):
and also how it was for all three of those
athletes too to.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
Be at these Olympics in particular.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
Yeah. So twenty twenty two we finally said farewell to
COVID I think by the end of that year slash
early twenty twenty three, which was so nice, and I think, Steph,
this is where I start to remember our podcast a
little bit more.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
I was gonna say, this has started to come into it.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
It's a little bit more like you're in one of
those binoculars where you can start to see everything become
less fuzzy.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
And I think to twenty twenty three, at some point,
we started recording twice a year. Sorry, we started recording
twice a week.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Imagine twice a year. That how many years we have
to record? Yeah, five hundred yeah, yeah, So.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
We started recording twice a week. So this was our
very first episodeisode of twenty twenty three. And whether or
not you're an NFL fan, Damar Hamlin his name probably
sounds familiar to you because his story was everywhere. He
was a safety for the Buffalo Bills, which is a
defensive position, and Hamlin suffered a cardiac arrest on the
(23:17):
field during Monday Night Football in primetime. He ultimately recovered
and is still playing with the Bills today, and it's
so great to see him out there. But it's hard
to overstate how scary this was and how it happened
and when it happened. And still people talk about Damar
Hamlin today based off of what happened to him early
(23:40):
twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
And I think this was one of those times too
where something like this really did spark. I think a
lot of debate within us on the podcast in this
community about the safety in the NFL and what needs
to be done to make it a safer sport. And
this particular episode was two thirty five. It was Damar
Hamlin updates and US men's national soccer team controversy.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Yeah, so it was a so harder And in that
men's controversy, we also covered an emerging story about then
head coach Craig Burholtz, who is being investigated by US
Soccer following the twenty twenty two World Cup. This was
such a dramatic time for the US men's national team
and it all boils down to some serious issues between
bur Halter and a player on the team, go Reina,
(24:25):
who was supposed to be a breakout star for the
Americans but spent most of the World Cup on the bench,
and a lot of people were like, dude, what the
hell could we have actually played so much better and
advanced so much further if we actually played Rena and
the way that we were supposed to. The details are sorted,
they get really quite nasty. We're not going to get
(24:47):
into them, but if you want to go back and
listen to it episode two thirty five.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
And that brings us to twenty twenty four episode three
eighty one, Copa America Chaos, PWHL Minnesota allegations and an
interview with soccer.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
Sorry Christy mwis.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
What a fucking random podcast? Like, are we okay?
Speaker 3 (25:05):
So many headlines?
Speaker 1 (25:07):
One of so many headlines? I think we were like, yeah,
that podcast, seo, we got to make sure we get
all the information in there, which I don't know how
it all works. Maybe that's still thing.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
I mean it was one of the top podcasts, so maybe.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
The top podcast.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
There you go.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Yeah, this one really surprised me that this was in
our top pods.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
I would agree.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
It aired on July sixteenth, twenty twenty four, and again
it was a three parter, so the first part Copa
America Lionel Messi seriously injured his ankle in Argentina's one
nil win over Columbia, and then the final and this
was just like one bit of the drama.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
The match began over an hour late.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Oh yes, bands were literally breaking into hard rock stadium
in Miami.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
Do you remember this now?
Speaker 1 (25:50):
Okay, now I remember this. This was a huge deal.
Now I'm less surprised that this was one of our
top podcasts because this was also when we started getting
into the conversation set because people were climbing fences, knocking
over security guards, people were trampled. There was amazing no
one was seriously hurt. We started having conversations in this
episode about, Okay, does America actually know how to handle
(26:14):
soccer fans, because to be clear, this is nothing new,
i'd say in the soccer world outside of North America.
If you look at South America, if you look at Europe,
their security, their sanctions are very different because soccer fans
go wild. And so we started having the conversation then
stuff of is North America ready to host a World Cup?
(26:35):
Because these are potentially the type of fans that are
going to be trying to enjoy the game that they're
used to enjoying the game wherever they're from. So that
was very interesting.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
And then for the PWHL part of this podcast, we
talked about the allegations that PWHL Minnesota was facing at
the time. So Minnesota won the inaugural the first PWHL season,
and then shortly after that the team was accused of
fostering a toxic work culture and general manager Natalie Darwitz
was dismissed. It was quite it was quite a tumultuous time,
(27:10):
i would say, and it was so it was so
fresh after the win and then for summer yeah, fuchs
about it.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Yeah, And then poor Christy Mwis, We were like, do
you mind just being at the end of this podcast?
You know what I mean? What were we thinking? Christy
mwis wants to come on the pod?
Speaker 3 (27:27):
Christy mwis is coming on the pod?
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Now? She's a mommy mama Sida No way, yeah. Her
and Sam Kerr so sweet, right perfect? I know, so sweet? Okay?
And that brings us to twenty twenty five. Episode four
fifty eight has been the most popular so far. This
one titled Victim Blaming in the Hockey Canada Assault Trial.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
This aired May eighth of this year, twenty twenty five,
and probably pretty safe to say that this is, if
not one of the hardest episodes that the entire team
had to produce of all time. In this episode, we
covered the latest updates at the time from the courtroom
in the Hockey Canada assault trial and shared our many
(28:10):
thoughts for why we thought perhaps this might be a
turning point in the Hockey Canada chapter and all of
this just disgustingness that comes out of hockey culture. But
now five months later, all five hockey players who were
on trial have been found not guilty and just really
(28:31):
underscores why we do what we do.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Yeah, and reinstated by the league who is asked to
do so by the team. So anyway, not the best
update since May so thank you all so much for
going down that trip down memory lane. It's so interesting
to see what we were talking about at sports in
any given year. I can only imagine looking back at
a radio show or TV show that's been on since
(28:55):
the nineties, like Part of the Interruption is one of
my favorite TV shows ever. They've turned and their TV
show into a podcast. The stories that they probably have
from the two thousands to now and how they look back,
I would I would love to hear an episode like
this from them before we kind of head into our
personal training Sesson, which is from one of one of
our listeners. Still a question we wanted to reminisce on,
(29:18):
like some some kooky things that have happened either behind
the scenes or just on the pod in general.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Someone I think it was we got a couple requests
to go over some of the bloopers in the behind
the scenes of the podcast, and so many of those
bloopers I think I joked in response via DM, it's
just going to be me pronouncing people's names wrong, like.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Just about to say y'all. Steph pronounces I think almost
every name wrong.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
Yeah yeah, I try my best, and I will before
an episode go on YouTube learn how to say a
person's name, think it, say it out loud to myself,
and then when we hit record, I say it wrong
and Ellen goes, okay, read do it pause, We.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
Do it pause. I think my favorite was when we
were talking about Canadian swimmer and Olympic medalist Maggie McNeil
and you somehow spelt you, somehow said McNeil wrong, and
I was like, okay, but I didn't even know how
to respond. It's like, what where are we just glitch?
Speaker 2 (30:22):
And I thought she was frozen and then I did
something wrong.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
Yeah. No, that was fun.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
There are so many times this year, though, that I
almost had a very very serious blooper, and that is
I almost announced on the podcast a very big, big
piece of news because I was privy to this information,
and then it would have leaked to our podcast editor,
and then the editor maybe would have talked to the
team at large any who. It was really hard for
(30:50):
me to keep this particular secret.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
You can share it.
Speaker 3 (30:53):
Can I share it?
Speaker 1 (30:54):
You can share it.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
So I did learn earlier this year that Ellen is pregnant,
and then I had to continuously remember that it's private
information and that I can't share it on the podcast,
and it was so difficult. You guys, I am terrible
at keeping secrets. And I'm so excited, and I hope
everyone else is so excited.
Speaker 3 (31:14):
Aunt, and he's a a girl.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
We're having a girl in January. It was so fun
getting to tell your stuff, because A, you are so
shocked and so excited and so cute. But then every
week you were like, have you told more people? Who
can I talk to about this? Have you told more people?
And the more people that I told that were also
friends with you, you were like, and thank goodness, now
I will be texting Michelle, and when are you telling
the team? Okay, So when we finally told the Just team,
(31:39):
which was about I don't know, three weeks ago now
or something like that, you were like, finally, And then
we've just been slowly telling people and letting the world know.
So we're having a baby girl, expecting her at the
end of January, which is so wild and so exciting
and we're really thrilled, but we're also so scared. I'm
(32:00):
so nervous and have truly no idea what we're doing,
but we're so excited.
Speaker 3 (32:05):
You're gonna be such a good mom.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
And also to all of those listening, no, she didn't
plan an athlete baby in the January.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
Just happened like.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
That, because there's that theory, right that if you're born
in the first how long is the first month, the
first two months of the year.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
I think it's kind of the first quarter, like five
months vibes, but the first quarter is.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
Money is money because they are developing and growing faster
than everyone else in there for more likely to be
a pro athlete.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
That was not part of the plan. It was just
happy happenstance.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
No exactly. I think that there was a book written
on that. And then I think Serena Williams and Lebron
James said, hold my beer. Serena famously a lebra, Lebron
famously born in December. So I think that that really
debunked everything. The time of year. It's really all about
genetics and athletics as a baby. But yeah, thank you, Steph.
It was so fun telling you early on and I
(32:56):
really appreciate you keeping this secret for honestly three months
at least at least it probably felt really long to you.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
It felt really long, yeah, because then to other people
I had like a coworker, and now everyone knows tell
me in private as well. I was just like, people
have to stop telling me because I want to blab,
but my ethics will not allow me. Three cheers for
Amazon Business for sponsoring this podcast. Remember the days before
online shopping, we're spoiled in the best way, especially when
(33:27):
it comes to fast, free shipping right to your doorstep.
That's why businesses of all shapes and sizes choose Amazon
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(33:48):
dot com for more. That's business dot Amazon dot com
for more. Already rue, it's time for our personal training session,
the last segment of the podcast, and in honor of
the five hundredth episode, today's session is going to be
a little bit different. It's a little bit more of
(34:09):
a history lesson focused on the changes that we have
seen since we've started the podcast, which is such an
amazing sentence to be able to say, especially since so
much of this is going to be focused on women's.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
Sports, women's sports and the female fan, And this idea
came from Buffalo, Aaron, So thank you Buffalo Aeron. They said,
for the five hundredth episode, you could do a segment
about the changes you've seen in women's sports, your growth
and opportunities since starting the pod, or address areas you
would have thought made more progress, if that's more applicable.
(34:45):
Congrats on five hundred. Love the pod and the newsletters.
Ps I love in Buffalo and love the showouts.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
Shut out Aaron.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
So there's a lot of different facts and fun facts
in here that we want to get to. I want to,
I think zoom out those steph first and paint the
picture a little bit of where we were at with
the gist in twenty seventeen and twenty eighteen, we were
in twenty twenty, and now where we are in twenty
twenty five.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
Please.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
When we came up with the idea for the Gist
in twenty seventeen, it felt very novel, very fun. We
were getting a lot of great feedback from our audience.
We launched an earnest in twenty eighteen, once we got
accepted into an incubator program actually with Facebook t through
the Facebook Journalist and Projects. We were one of five
companies selected across Canada to be part of this, and
(35:36):
so we quit our jobs. We decided to go all
in on the GIST. And what was so interesting Steph,
is that in twenty eighteen, as much as Facebook kind
of gave their stamp of approval on the idea for
the Gist and everything that we talked about at the
top of the pod, what we stand for, what we
were going to do, so many people did not get it.
The amount of knows that we received when we were
(35:58):
trying to money for the GIST around why do things
need to be different for a next generation fan? What
do you mean there's a bigger opportunity with female fans.
They're not watching, they're not buying in the same way.
What do you mean we need to be putting more
women's sports on TV or we need to be providing
equal coverage on women's sports. I don't agree they're not
(36:20):
driving revenue. That that was truly what we were coming
up against in twenty eighteen every single day, and I
think stef from a podcast perspective, we dealt with that
sometimes too. You had some hand comments.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Oh one of like I truly felt like I made
it in the podcasting worm, which is a little bit
of a joke. Trust me, I'm being funny. When I
started to get some men commenting, shut your mouth up.
I don't want to ever hear you speak about hockey ever, again,
I screenshotted all of them and just kept them in
a little older to smile at, like one person being like,
(36:59):
what do you know about hockey culture? Have you ever
even been in a dressing room? So clearly these people
haven't listened to the podcast because guests, I've been in
dressing rooms before, locker rooms, if you will.
Speaker 3 (37:09):
And yeah, I thought to myself, men are mad at me.
This is fantastic. I'm doing this is great.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
We're doing something right in the world. So that's kind
of what we experienced at the beginning of the just
in the podcast stuff. I think in the early days
and then what has been so cool, I'd say, in
particular over the last two or three years, and I
think where we take so much pride in for us
as a business and for our entire team. And what
we've done with the Gist of it in our community
(37:36):
is that people in the industry, whether it's investors or
brands or team owners, leagues, what have you, they're starting
to recognize two things. Female fans hold a lot of
power and should not be ignored. And women's sports are
growing and you need to get on the rocket ship. Now.
(37:58):
It took a long time to get here, and hopefully
we were a part of that change. But i'd say
Steph the female fans side of things in us working
with the NFL, who wants to be able to connect
and grow with this type of fan. We hoped that
was on our radar when we started the GIST and
that was our goal, but who knew if that was
actually going to happen. And now people are really starting
(38:19):
to take women in the serious way that they need
to be taken seriously. Same with women's sports. When we
Steph started covering the podcast in twenty twenty, we were
one of the only news podcasts that was covering pre PWHL,
the WNBA, and the wubble. What was happening with the NWSL,
(38:40):
like it was such a different space and people like
craved that so much, and now we have all of
these different women's sports podcasts, we have all of these
different women's sports companies. The growth of women's rugby and
soccer and everything like that is just so remarkable that
the conversations in the space has just changed so much.
It's actually mind blowing. And it's still going up into
(39:01):
the right.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
Okay, so let's put some numbers to that.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
Ellen mentioned that just started prior to twenty nineteen, but
we started the podcast in twenty twenty, so this is
a stack coming from twenty nineteen. In twenty nineteen, less
than six percent of coverage was of women's sports, and
now in twenty twenty five, it's projected that women's sports
will account for twenty percent of all sports coverage. That
is a massive jump, and I.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
Want to put an asterisk beside that step. In twenty nineteen,
it was also a world in a space where we
were still relying on traditional channels and media to consume sports,
So we were thinking about TV broadcasters, newspapers, traditional websites.
Fast forward to twenty twenty five, what's the way we
all get our news? Newsletters, social media, podcast you get
(39:46):
everything through your phone because of technology and because of
the way it's democratized, the way that people are able
to share information, we are able to put out content
that people actually will enjoy in a different way and
finding these niche but not so niche anymore communities, and
so there's a huge technology play in this too.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
So those numbers were brought to you by Wasserman's The Collective.
A study done by McKenzie showed that fifty seven percent
of women's sports fans have become fans within the last
five years. So that's the duration we've been doing the podcast. Yeah,
fantastic to think about it.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
So it's really so exciting. I think to Aaron's question
of places where you think that there would be more progress,
I'm thrilled at the progress we've seen. I actually am
so so happy. I am someone that's always wanting more
and looking for more, and I think that's what we're
trying to do at the GIST, to say more and
more and more and actually push it. But those two
(40:47):
statistics rate alone, stuff from a women's sports perspective are huge.
Another thing that just came out today from or yesterday
from our friend Caroline Fitzgerald at Goals, who has an
amazing podcast herself. She also writes for Forbes, and she
did an interview with this company called crowd i Q,
which uses this like I don't know, cool ai and
(41:07):
things like that to assess venues in fans and venues
for the younger generation stuff. So basically, anybody, I think
it was forty and under, who is attending and enjoying
thank you? Who is attending and enjoying men's sports? The
fans are fifty to fifty, And so their big takeaway
from this crowdug Que report is that the barrier that
(41:32):
once was there for female fans to enjoy men's sports
is starting to close. And within that same breath, Nielsen
has always said the most unprecedented growth is the female
fan in sports, and so we're starting to see that
in really tangible ways of how women are beginning to
feel more and more comfortable in these men's sports spaces
(41:56):
and places. And I think a part of that is
because there's Q communities, there's shows, there's the gist, there's
maybe the Taylor Swift effect that has finally allowed so
many people to say, oh, this is for me too,
and this product on the ice or on the field
is amazing and I want to enjoy it just the same,
and so I love seeing those types of statistics as well.
Speaker 2 (42:17):
I wholeheartedly believe that because I can even speak to
that anecdotically. Knowing that the PWHL exists also has made
it so much easier for me to assert myself from
a hockey standpoint in any hockey environment. I like that
because I'm like, don't play with me like we're we
are the real deal. We are just as much a
fan or just as much an athlete as you are.
Speaker 1 (42:38):
I love that. And with that mic drop, thank you
all so much for five hundred episodes. We have had
the best time over the last five years. Steph, thank
you so much for putting up with me for five
hund and for your continued friendship. I truly look forward
to our recordings so much, and part of that is
when I'm on leave for Maturnity, like, I'll probably only
(43:00):
be able to be away from the pod for a
month because I'm like, I need to be able to
see stuff. We need to be able to Yeah, And
so thank you so much, and thanks to our amazing
team of producers too and editors who just make the
gist of it happen every single week.
Speaker 2 (43:18):
Yeah, and even if you are gone for a period
of time, I'm sure just will be very supportive and
right there ready for you.
Speaker 3 (43:24):
To come back. And yes, I'm so excited for a
little baby Ellen in the world. Oh boy, I know
you have a partner, but we don't know him.
Speaker 1 (43:33):
He's not growing him. No. So that marks the end
of today's episode. Thank y'all so much for tuning in.
We'll be back in your feed with a new podcast
next Thursday because we are observing Canadian Thanksgiving on Monday
and my sister's getting married this weekend. So in the meantime,
if you enjoy this episode, we'd love for you to rate, review,
and subscribe.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
This episode was edited by Savannah Held and produced by
Lisa Minnutillo, Alessandra Puccio and Lauren Tuscla.
Speaker 3 (44:00):
And I'm Steph Rots and
Speaker 1 (44:01):
I'm Ellen his Lap And we'll chat with you again
on Thursday for five hundredth and first episode.
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