It is, at this moment, Monday March 20, 2023. And Broad Street Hockey is a mere eleven days from becoming an independent publication. This feels like a good time to tell you all where we are with things.
As we mentioned a few weeks back, Broad Street Hockey will be moving to a hybrid free/subscription model moving forward. We thought a lot about this and I’d like to explain a bit why we decided to go this way.
When Vox announced that we’d all be getting slashed, there were a couple of offers from other media outlets who wanted to bring our sites on board with them. I won’t mention the names, but you know both of them, and both offers would have kept the sites free for you. They would, however, be lousy with advertisements. And not only that, but both of these outlets trade in what I will kindly describe as quantity over quality. The expectation of their writers is that content will be pumped out without any real regard for what that content is. That also becomes the only way their writers make any money, so the incentive is to write as many articles as you possibly can. It’s not what we want to do here.
So we are asking for a small subscription fee, which I’ll detail later, that will allow us to operate the site without advertisements and with the freedom to produce quality, thoughtful, and interesting content for you. Like we said back in February, all of us here plan to make Broad Street Hockey a better site than it has been over the last couple of years. And we intend to prove that to you.
Related
Broad Street Hockey Fundraising Effort
Now, let’s get into the details.
At midnight on April 1, we will no longer be hosted on Vox’s platform. We have begun building a new site on a new platform that will be ready for you on April 1, but with a few caveats. We expect that Vox will not transfer the Broad Street Hockey domain to us in time for it to be live on April 1. That means in the interim you will find us at our temporary domain: https://broad-street-hockey.ghost.io/
Go ahead and pop that into your bookmarks so you’ll know where to find us April 1. You’re welcome to check it out now, but there isn’t much to see. We’re still fully under construction.
When we go live, you’ll be asked to subscribe to the site. This doesn’t necessarily mean pay us money, just that you’ll need to make a new account in order to comment on any articles. Same as you did here. Now, about that whole money thing…
Here’s what the new BSH will offer, by tier:
The Jay Rosehill Tier – Free
This tier is our free-to-all, entry-level content offering. As part of the Jay Rosehill you will have access to the Fly By and all Game Threads. As long as you’ve made an account on the site, you’ll be able to participate in the comments.
The Matt(Meat) Read – $5 per month or $50 per year
You get everything in the Rosehill plus Previews, Recaps, all breaking news, and the weekly Prospect Report.
The Wayne Simmonds – $10 per month or $100 per year
The Simmer gives you all of the above plus all other articles on BSH — analysis, prospect deep-dives, opinion pieces, player grades, Everything Is Sports, etc. All the things.
The Eric Lindros – $15 per month or $150 per year
All of the above plus a weekly newsletter and access to a private BSH Discord. The newsletter aims to be more interesting than just a regular article about hockey. If you’re familiar with the Defector newsletter, it will be in that spirit. Written by one of the BSH writers, the newsletter will be more of a free-form, conversational piece. I think you’ll like it, it’s going to be really fun.
The Andrew MacDonald – $100 per month or $1,000 per year
You get exactly what is in the Lindros tier but you’re paying way, way too much for it. Everyone thinks you are big dumb for paying that much for this content. But like Andrew MacDonald, if you want to overpay us, we aren’t going to stop you.
… okay this one is mostly a joke. It’s hilarious, admit it.
To kick things off, the month of April will be totally free for all readers. We want to make sure everyone knows what we plan to offer going forward. After that we will be offering a promotion, The 2010 Sale! If you sign up before August 1 you will get 20% off an annual subscription and 10% off a monthly. Fun, right? We are so fun around here.
So that’s where we are in our metamorphosis. We’re still in the pod but it looks really weird and you can see our weird new eyeballs starting to poke through. I hope you enjoyed that visual. Anyway, please ask any question you have in the comments, I will be happy to answer them. Feedback is also welcome. But you have to be nice to me, thanks.
