Broadcaster Eoin McDevitt and his four colleagues from the Second Captains podcast shared a production fee pay-pot of €620,000 last year.
That is according to new accounts for the company behind the podcasts, Second Captains Ltd.
The accounts for 2022 show that connected companies owned by McDevitt, Ken Early, Ciaran Murphy, Simon Hick and Mark Horgan were each paid €124,000 in fees for production work carried out on behalf of Second Captains Ltd last year.
The €124,000 paid in fees was a 12 per cent increase on the €111,000 each paid out by Second Captains Ltd to the five firms during 2021.
The five also shared an additional aggregate €72,000 in pay to directors last year – an average of €14,400 each.
Underlining the buoyant 2022 for the podcast business, the company's cash funds last year increased sharply from €239,070 to €321,585.
After the payout to the directors’ firms and other costs, the company recorded a modest profit of €1,947 for the year.
Accumulated profits at the end of last year stood at €46,418.
The podcast recently celebrated 10 years in business with a sell-out live podcast show at Dublin's Olympia featuring the likes of Liverpool ‘legend' Graeme Souness.
The five Second Captains directors each hold a 20 per cent share in the company and the podcast company generates the bulk of its revenues from paying subscribers.
The accounts state that the principal activity of the company is online content, radio, television and live event production.
The podcast launched its paid subscription service in February 2017 and within the first day had attracted 2,500 subscribers.
Despite rising inflation in recent times, the Second Captains have not increased on the €5 per month plus VAT subscription charge for a range of podcasts and revenues from the paying subscribers has allowed the company to carry out longer-term investigative projects like its highly acclaimed series ‘Where Is George Gibney?’ for BBC Sounds.
The Second Captains website states that it currently has 14,250 and this translates to estimated revenues of €855,000 per annum based on the €5 per month charge.
The Second Captains firm was also one of scores of outside firms to produce programming for RTÉ last year and it produced nine hours of Second Captains Saturday on RTÉ 1 Radio in 2022 and was contracted to produce the show again this past summer.
The Second Captains team originally produced and presented the Off The Ball show on Newstalk radio for eight years, winning nine PPI national radio awards during that time.
They left the station in 2013 and subsequently moved to The Irish Times before going independent in 2017.
