The Voice of Pickleball with The Dink’s Thomas Shields - [Making Media, EP.37]

This week we cover another niche media business. Our guest, Thomas Shields, launched The Dink in late 2020 and has quickly grown it to become the media authority on the booming sport of Pickleball. Across its newsletter, podcasts, videos, blogs, and more, The Dink offers everything you could want to know about the sport. And we discuss the whole journey and business with Thomas, who started it as a side venture and now has far grander plans for it. Enjoy!

For the full show notes, transcript, and links to the best content to learn more, check out the episode page here.

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Show Notes (00:02:00) - (First question) - Thomas’ experience with content creation prior to starting The Dink (00:03:49) - How the first ever newsletter looked and its contents (00:04:59) - When the Dink started creating new content as well as curating existing news (00:06:20) - The point when The Dink started breaking news stories (00:07:21) - Family connections with Fromuth and the inception of Fromuth Pickleball (00:09:49) - The reason why The Dink and Fromuth needed to separate their businesses (00:11:01) - How The Dink made its first big steps as an industry leader in Pickleball news (00:12:32) - How The Dink separated themselves from competitors (00:13:11) - Thomas’ influences from other sports when creating content for The Dink (00:14:00) - The evolution of the frequency of the newsletter (00:14:52) - A breakdown of The Dink’s audience (00:15:57) - Profiling the avid Pickleball fan (00:16:48) - The timeline from getting started as a side hustle to Thomas making the leap into working on The Dink full time (00:19:00) - Thomas’ strategy for the business moving forward (00:23:13) - The Dink’s plan for content, diversification into other sports or delving deeper into Pickleball (00:25:59) - How Thomas plans to become more independent and less reliant on Pickleball’s economy (00:27:05) - Harnessing media to grow Major League Pickleball and The Dink’s relationship with the league (00:29:12) - What Thomas has learned about the value of each of The Dink’s media outlets (00:31:26) - Bundling for cross media advertising (00:33:08) - The influence of celebrities involvement in Pickleball (00:35:48) - The challenge of bringing supply and demand together as Pickleball grows (00:36:59) - The differences between Platform Tennis, Padel and Pickleball (00:38:26) - Where Thomas would like to strengthen his team with investment (00:40:26) - Thomas’ opinion on the biggest opportunity within the Pickleball ecosystem right now (00:43:03) - The sport that Thomas would choose were The Dink to create another newsletter (00:45:24) - Debrief