‘Give it a crack and see what happens’: How former AFL player Dylan Buckley created a media empire (2024)

Dylan Buckley, as he puts it, is a high-achieving lazy person.

What he means is he’ll work really hard on something – say, booking a podcast guest, researching and prepping, interviewing them – but once the episode is in the can, just release it and move on. Or, in his words: “f---, whatever, it is what it is.”

He says there’s often a fear with creative people to hit publish on work because it’s hard to stop tinkering.

“But for me, I’m just like, I’m just gonna release this because it’s getting me closer to the next thing,” says Buckley, the podcaster and former footballer once described as possibly “the most influential 41-gamer in AFL history”.

“It’s the complete opposite to what everyone ever told me [to do]. And I’m not saying this is the right thing to do. But I know that if I did [tinker], I wouldn’t release any of it. So I just let it go.”

That authentic approach has resonated with a staggering number of Australian sports fans.

His podcast Dyl & Friends is one of Australia’s most listened-to podcasts, let alone sporting ones, with more than 4.3 million downloads and 1.5 million listeners in 2023.

Buckley is not just a media personality, but a mogul, running the independent media company Producey and Clubby Sports podcast network, which also houses The Footy with Broden Kelly and Kick it Forward, along the flagship Dyl & Friends.

Last year Buckley came in at 43 on The Age’s top 50 AFL people who will influence footy over the next decade, beating out Geelong premiership captain and media personality Joel Selwood, media commentator and AFL great Leigh Matthews and AFL commissioner Simone Wilkie.

A gig on the red carpet on Channel Seven’s Brownlow Medal coverage cemented his status as one of sport and pop culture’s new media stars.

Buckley takes what he does seriously, but he also follows where the fun is, he explains.

We’re sitting at Alimentari on Brunswick Street in Fitzroy. It’s a local of Buckley’s.

We both notice former Australian cricket great Adam Gilchrist sitting at a table out the front. It’s Melbourne and it’s sport, hey.

Buckley knows the area well. The son of three-time Carlton premiership player Jim Buckley, he grew up just behind Piedimonte’s, the supermarket and North Fitzroy institution with an almost cult-like following.

Now 31, he lives nearby with his wife, Juzz, and their son, Max.

Buckley followed his legendary dad to Carlton under the father-son rule in 2012, but played just 39 games in five years. He doesn’t dwell on his truncated career at the Blues, except when he braces to pick up Max and wonders if his back might give out. “I’m so sore now. Like, just everything I do.”

A stint at Greater Western Sydney, where he played two games, caused him to briefly move to Sydney between 2018-19, before moving back to the inner suburbs of Melbourne. During his second season at the Giants Buckley started Dyl and Friends, thinking it could lead to a radio career. He began by interviewing his mates, who happened to be footballers, and the audience grew.

Here at Alimentari he orders his usual: persian eggs with avocado and crispy chilli oil on the side. I opt for the baked eggs without chorizo (vegetarian) and we both get a coffee. His order is an oat flat white, mine a soy latte.

He tells me he often used to say he wanted to delete the first 50 episodes of his podcast.

“But without that, you wouldn’t have the 300, so ...” he says. Even if his early forays into podcasting make him cringe, his attitude now is to be proud of what he created.

Loading

This year’s podcast guests have included a range of sports types. From footy he has landed interviews with AFL men’s stars Christian Petracca, Nat Fyfe and Sam Walsh, AFLW legend Erin Phillips, league CEO Andrew Dillon and Sydney Swans boss Tom Harley. Among his other guests are comedian Guy Williams and rugby league star and mental health advocate Nicho Hynes.

He’s an (accidental) news breaker, too. Almost a year ago, he landed the interview everyone in the AFL world wanted, speaking with three-time Richmond premiership coach Damien Hardwick, who had a few months earlier quit the Tigers citing burnout. Hardwick candidly told Buckley he wanted to return to coaching. The Gold Coast Suns later joined the holidaying Hardwick in Italy to present him with an offer to do just that, and the coach is now pushing the northern expansion team up the ladder.

But breaking big news stories was never Buckley’s plan. He said someone he regards as an incredibly good journalist once said to him: “Man, you’re doing a great job. But you don’t break any stories.” Buckley didn’t take offence, but says: “I was like, ‘I don’t want to f---ing break stories’, I have no interest in doing that.

“We’ve even held off stories because I’m like, ‘This is not the point of the show’ ... Even doing the Dimma [Hardwick]-Richmond thing, I didn’t even want to do that. I was like, ‘I wish this wasn’t us’ because it’s just not the point of it.

“But also, how cool that he would be open enough to tell us. So, that was why it was a good one. But I wasn’t going there to get a scoop out of it and it’s not something that [the show] it’s ever going to be or focused on.”

I bring up the rise of AFL players and former players getting into content creation, such as Carlton’s Harry McKay and his brother, Essendon’s Ben McKay, who make The Ben and Harry Podcast. Then there’s Christian Petracca’s cooking TikToks, some of which have racked up more than 3.3 million views.

“I’m really biased to, like, digital media, I love guys that create their own content because then there’s no real grey area of what they’re being misconstrued saying, it’s on their own platform,” he says.

He references a recent episode with four-time premiership player Isaac Smith, who won at both Hawthorn and Geelong, in which they dive into the business of sports and the importance of good administration to club success, to explain the range of personalities and topics he wants to showcase.

“You can have opinions, you can be passionate about things, but you can still go and have some beers with your mates and like watching reality TV,” he says.

“So I like to be able to talk and to help [people] but then I like to be able to talk absolute bullsh*t that has no sense, and take things really seriously, but then also not take things seriously at all.”

We’re more than an hour into our meeting and it’s 15 minutes since our plates were cleared. Buckley asks, “Should we get another coffee?” The answer is yes.

I can see how he makes his podcast guests comfortable. Conversation comes easily to him.

I ask about whether he ever feels intimidated sharing so much of himself with so many people.

“I do, yeah, I find it extremely daunting. And I think it’s one of those things that I forget sometimes what I even talk about because you’re just so in a conversation and chatting, and then I’ll run into someone at an event or a party and they’ll be like, ‘Oh you said this,’ and I’ll be like, ‘F---, like, I wish I didn’t say that,’” he says.

“But it’s almost nice to just sort of have that comfortability in yourself to just say what you’re feeling.”

He tells me the more he talks to “incredible people”, which for him doesn’t necessarily mean high-profile people, the more he realises everyone stumbles through their work.

“The more you actually think you know what you’re doing, you’re lying … Anyone who’s successful in – whatever that means, that’s another question – they have no idea. And I have no idea,” he says. “You just got to give it a crack and see what happens.”

Now, the hard question. Who does he support in the AFL?

“I’m 50-50 [Carlton and GWS]. I know that’s really hard to say ... My heritage and love for football came at Carlton, so I’m always going to have a soft spot for them. But … I was in such a weird place when I got delisted,” he says.

“I always just think back if I didn’t get taken to the Giants, like where would my life be? I’m just so grateful for that opportunity,” he says.

“I can never repay the faith of the Giants. I love that place. I love western Sydney. I love the footy club, love the people, love the experience ... It’s probably the coolest thing that ever happened to me.”

Well, that and becoming a dad.

Buckley has been open about his mental health since entering the media, telling this masthead last year that during his playing career he battled vomiting and intrusive thoughts on game days.

“I hoped that I would be injured and not have to play for six weeks… I always used to think if I had six weeks off I would get over it and get myself right, and it would be different, but unfortunately, it never was.”

He says he has since learnt to live with his overthinking and anxiety, and learnt to be present with his family after putting a podcast episode to bed.

“It’s taken me a while to become my own best friend,” he says. “It’s been a weird journey.”

Marnie Vinall appears on The Footy with Broden Kelly which is part of Dylan Buckley’s podcast network.