It’s a first. A YouTube channel now offers its viewers insurance.
FieldsportsChannel covers its viewers if they have an accident with a gun, or covers their legal battle if the police come to seize their guns. The insurance is available to its supporters’ club, the Fieldsports Nation.
FieldsportsChannel, which has 350,000 subscribers on YouTube, specialises in hunting, shooting, guns, fishing and the outdoors. It makes a popular weekly TV show called Fieldsports Britain.
Fieldsports Channel’s membership scheme, which costs £60 a year, already has 2,000 paying members. Cost of membership is £90 a year and it offers both legal and public liabilty cover for that price.
YouTube channel memberships come of age with the new initiative. “As far as I know, no other YouTube channel offers insurance as a member benefit,” says Fieldsports Channel presenter Charlie Jacoby. “It’s our push to build our membership. More membership means we can make more media about hunting and shooting, the people who do it, and the benefits it brings to the countryside.”
UK hunting and shooting organisations such as BASC and the National Gamekeepers Organisation already offer a variety of insurance packages, though few offer legal insurance as part of membership. Insurance resellers such as Ripe Shooting and Side by Side have been quick to fill the gap in the legal insurance market.
Charlie says: “Every extra 1,000 members we get is another high-quality broadcast journalist we can hire to tell the story of countrysports and the countryside in the national media, and fight back against the version peddled by the ‘conservation industry’.”
In 2013, Patreon popularised the idea of supporting a YouTube channel. It asked viewers to put their hands in their pockets to support their favourite YouTube creators. Ko-fi.com, WeAreTipJar.com and YouTube itself followed the trend.
Fieldsports Channel started its membership journey by registering as a plc and launching a retail share scheme in 2018. Most of its shareholders became members in 2019 when it launched a membership scheme across YouTube, its own website, Patreon and Facebook. Benefits including goodie boxes. Now the benefits include insurance.
Click here for Fieldsports membership, now with insurance 🙂
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