2021 has been a tumultuous year for many (most) and the same can be said about us. This time last year, we had just finished our inaugural Advent Calendar of best individual Draft Fantasy performances of the Premier League era and were already gearing up for the launch of our site, which was due to happen in March. Here is a little retrospective look at what The Draft Society achieved in the year 2021!
The Website and Articles
Sheer Numbers
Since the start of 2021, we have published a staggering amount of articles. We are proud partners of Fantrax HQ providing them fantasy content in 20/21 and 21/22. In the calendar year, we managed to write 114 articles on Fantrax HQ besides producing content on our website.
We started the Draft Society website during the March international break, on the 22nd of March 2021. In the 285 days between then and New Year's Eve, we wrote a staggering 323 articles, we have updated countless statistics tables, and created weekly projections and monthly ranks since the start of the 2021/22 season.
Around the World
We have always known that the DraftPL community was massive, but we never knew it was this big! Here are some of our viewership numbers from all around the world:
Our site has been visited by no less than 5,000 cities from all over the world, from 142 different countries. Our US visitors account for 40% of all our traffic and the UK is second with 25%. Our top 2 cities are however from the 3rd and 4th ranked countries. The overall top city to where our site was reached the most is Reykjavik, Iceland, followed by a close second in Sydney, Australia. The only other non-UK, non-US cities to crack the top 10 are Dublin, Ireland, and Melbourne, Australia. The top UK city is London and the top US cities are Chicago, Washington DC, and New York. We would like to give a special shoutout to our unique visitors from countries such as Albania, Nigeria, Tanzania, Panama, Nepal, Guam, and Cuba.
Our Top Articles
The top articles read by you this year have come at the most exciting time of the year, when we all were planning for Draft Day! Our most visited article this year was an Inner Circle article: Tiered Ranks had some pretty good advice on pre-draft value, but boy were we wrong about Bernardo Silva? ;)
This was also a fun article to write and you seem to liked it as well: A Starting 11 of Fantasy EPL Sleepers. Pinnock, Matip, CHO, and Cucho seem to be paying dividends from this lot.
The Podcast
You have heard us talk a lot! We started the year as The Kick Around Pod and we managed 19 episodes from January to March when we announced our move to the Draft Society and with that to the Key Pass Collective. The KPC has released 39 episodes in the year 2021.
Over the course of the year, KPC episodes have been downloaded 16.5k times from all over the world (US, UK, Iceland, and Australia again taking most of the downloads), 72+ countries to be precise
You seem to have been most interested in our early season work, as Episode 11, a Mock Draft Analysis, GW1 Reactions, and GW2 Listener Questions are the most downloaded episodes to date...
The Community
Socials
Safe to say, we have been active on Twitter... We tweeted 1351 times, which is more than 3 tweets a day. That's mental. We have also started sharing our content on Reddit and Discord, where we have launched a dedicated Discord channel for our Inner Circle members.
The tweet that got most of you involved, with a whopping 127,000 reach was Bold Predictions for the 2021-22 season. The very first tweet that got you all excited was our Team Reveal.
The most staggering number, however is that over the course of 2021, we gained a frankly unbelievable 3.9 million impressions on all our tweets combined!
Subscribers
We have had the absolute honour of making daily content for a lot of you. 1,400 of you have subscribed to our content on our website and 730 of you have decided to become members of the Inner Circle, which is hands down the most incredible feeling that you have decided to spend your hard-earned money on content that we produce. We are truly humbled.
Finances
The Inner Circle
When we were discussing and planning among ourselves for the launch of our endeavor, we imagined 10-20 of you joining the Inner Circle. Imagine our surprise when the expected number was reached within seconds of us launching the site. We feel truly blessed to have the support of so many of you and we would like to be as transparent as possible about the money you paid. Since 1st July IC subscriptions were bought in excess of 16,000 USD, which is an unimaginable sum of money. We will continue to run the site as we have so far, keeping most of our content free, but this outpouring of support has definitely turned our heads towards providing more in-depth analysis and extra content for those of you in the Inner Circle.
Our Anonymous Donors
Before we officially launched the Inner Circle some of you decided to donate part of your fantasy winnings to us even though there was no subscription content available then. We would like to take this opportunity to express our gratitude towards you as you believed in us even before we showed you what we can do!
What We Spent
When we started this venture, we decided that we would like to be transparent about what we spend our money on, and we also decided that during the first season of our existence we would not pay any of us for writing or providing content. Therefore most of our earnings have not been spent whatsoever. What we have spent on so far: Website running costs for around 500 USD, officially licensed pictures for 260 USD, Podcast hosting subscription for 110 USD, and Competition Prizes to the extent of around 150 USD.
Going forward we plan to reinvest our earnings in new articles, features, and website upgrades to make our content more useful to you, the readers. We also plan to use a small portion of the money we earned to organise a TDS-writer get-together and watch an EPL game together when the global climate allows. As we are currently residing on 3 continents, 5 different countries, and 8 different cities, you can imagine this will not be an easy task. We will, however, be sure to provide you with the details of our planning.
For all the latest from The Draft Society, follow @Draft_Society on Twitter!
And for more in-depth and exclusive resources, become a member of The Inner Circle.
