A Year of The Scottish Football Kick-Off - What Now?

The Scottish Football Kick-Of is one-year-old. What happens now?

Hello, 12 months ago, The Scottish Football Kick-Off was officially launched. I am not sure I could have predicted the mad year that Scottish football has had since.

Livingston won the KDM Evolution Trophy against Queen’s Park less than a month after starting The Scottish Football Kick-Off.

Callum Davidson had been sacked as Queen’s Park manager two weeks before, then went on to be a pundit on Sportsound, assistant coach at Ross County, and is now assistant manager at Leicester City.

To be fair, job changes have been common. Celtic, Rangers, Kelty Hearts, Airdrieonians, Ross County, and Kilmarnock have all hired new permanent managers, said permanent manager have departed, and they have hired another new permanent manager, all within the last year.

Barry Ferguson became interim Rangers manager for a brief period before all that, too. He even managed to knock a Jose Mourinho team out of Europe.

Since The Kick-Off has started, Scotland has qualified for a World Cup, Aberdeen have won the Scottish Cup, St Mirren have won the League Cup, and Hearts are top of the Premiership as we go into March.

Throw in Scott McTominay and Caroline Weir being nominated for the Ballon d’Or, Hibs getting £6m for Kieron Bowie while also making their record signing within the same 12-month period. Aberdeen and Hearts also made record signings.

Hamilton Academical have been deducted an incredible 36 points since The Kick-Off launched.

And that is just a flavour of the past year.

Fortunately for me, The Kick-Off has become a staple part of people’s daily routines and I’ve been able to update as it’s happened.

260 Daily Kick-Offs

For 260 weekdays, I have pulled together all the latest Scottish football news and ignored as much VAR, rumours, and clickbait nonsense as possible to put The Kick-Off together for free.

As of today, it has nearly 2700 subscribers - thank you to every single one of you. The feedback has been incredible. Here is how it has grown for those interested:

I gave myself a year to see where I could get this to.

There have been periods when growth plateaued and times when there was a surge of subscribers.

To the small band of paid subscribers, I cannot thank you enough. You have helped me believe it was worth starting.

What Next?

And now for the inevitable call for support. To justify the hours I have put into this (probably over 1000 in the last 12 months), The Kick-Off needs to do one of two things.

1. Triple its free subscriber numbers to make it an attractive proposition to advertisers, so I can get investment that way.

(Recommendations on club forums, Pie & Bovril, Facebook groups, podcasts, X, and Reddit would be very much welcome btw)

Or

2. More than double the number of paid subscribers to generate a small but worthwhile income that way.

Until the World Cup begins, I’m lowering the annual subscription to £20.

Monthly will remain at £5, which, let’s be honest, is not even the price of a pint nowadays.

A lot of Substacks send these types of emails regularly, and I’ve tried to avoid that.

If anything, it cost me subscribers, the one time I did it previously - this is not your sign to do that… please.

If you like The Kick-Off, please support it.

Unfortunately, The Kick-Off may have to come to an end in the summer without either one of the two things happening. And just to clarify, I have no intention to make the daily Kick-Off anything other than free. As long as I do this, it will remain free.

On the flip side, the more paid subscribers I get, the more I can invest in feature-length pieces on the weekends and put back into Scottish football.

Thanks,

Michael