{"id":13038,"date":"2022-11-14T17:04:14","date_gmt":"2022-11-14T17:04:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/?p=13038"},"modified":"2022-11-14T17:04:14","modified_gmt":"2022-11-14T17:04:14","slug":"george-hook-is-leaving-the-independent-for-a-3-year-old-sports-website","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/?p=13038","title":{"rendered":"George Hook is leaving the Independent for a 3-year-old sports website"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

VETERAN SPORTS COMMENTATOR George Hook will leave his roles with the Irish\u00a0Independent and Sunday Independent to join startup\u00a0Irish sports website Pundit Arena.<\/p>\n

As part of the deal, Hook will write a weekly column for Pundit Arena and take part in videos produced by the website.\u00a0He will continue to host his weekday drive time radio show, The Right Hook, on Newstalk.<\/p>\n

The announcement from the Cork-based startup, which launched in 2013 has come a few months\u00a0after the company raised \u20ac650,000\u00a0from a number of investors. The backers included entrepreneur\u00a0Colm Lyon, who last year\u00a0sold his company Realex Payments for \u20ac115 million.<\/p>\n

The platform publishes mainly fan-sourced material, rewarding writers through a \u2018gamified\u2019 system of prizes that produces a leader board based on the stories with the most views and social media shares. Contributors also get a cut of the income when material is sold to other media outlets.<\/p>\n

Hook told\u00a0Fora<\/em>\u00a0he was \u201cdelighted\u201d to join the company, which he described as\u00a0\u201cexciting and energetic\u201d.<\/p>\n

Hook has been a contributor to the Irish Independent for over a decade\u00a0and wrote predominantly about sport, politics and current affairs.<\/p>\n

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He stepped away from his rugby pundit role at RT\u00c9 last year and in early 2014, Hook revealed plans to retire from Newstalk in 2016.\u00a0Fora\u00a0<\/em>understands a deal has been cut with Newstalk for the presenter to stay on at the station.<\/p>\n

The announcement follows the defection of former Sunday Independent chief football writer Dion Fanning to SportsJOE.ie, which is part of the Maximum Media stable of titles.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

A drawcard<\/p>\n

Pundit Arena co-founder Richard Barrett said getting Hook on board will help draw a larger number of rugby fans to the site.<\/p>\n

Pundit Arena co-founders Ross O’Dwyer, left, and Barrett.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s an incredibly divisive character in terms of people who read rugby, but people still read him. He\u2019s one of these people you either love or love to hate.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to have the best in independent journalism and George definitely fits that bill. He is the best in his field and will help take us to the next level.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it will really establish us as a big name in Irish rugby. Although we have good traction in Ireland, it\u2019s not to the same extent as we do in the UK where we already have Andy Goode and Topsy Ojo writing for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Written by Killian Woods and originally published on\u00a0Fora,\u00a0a\u00a0new business publication\u00a0for\u00a0Irish startups and SMEs.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018For these guys to get the opportunity to play against the All Blacks is massive\u2018>Ireland may be forced into late squad changes as injury concerns grow>\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0 <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

VETERAN SPORTS COMMENTATOR George Hook will leave his roles with the Irish\u00a0Independent and Sunday Independent to join startup\u00a0Irish sports website Pundit Arena. As part of the deal, Hook will write a weekly column for Pundit Arena and take part in videos produced by the website.\u00a0He will continue to host his weekday drive time radio show, … <\/p>\n

Read more “George Hook is leaving the Independent for a 3-year-old sports website”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13038\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}