KopTalk is a Liverpool FC website that was launched by Duncan Oldham and Colin Seaman back in 1999. At the time there was only a handful of LFC forums in existence and the official club site had yet to launch.
Seaman left the site shortly afterwards to pursue a successful career as a web designer, but KopTalk initially proved to be a popular forum, although opinion has always been divided as to whether this was due primarily to the abilities of the people who created the site, or was instead down to the wit, intelligence and knowledge of the site’s early members.
From the outset, KopTalk was a heavily commercialised website that specialised in transfer gossip. This approach owed a huge debt to the infamous Brian Bentley of the Team Talk site, who had pioneered a similar style during the mid-1990s.
Duncan Oldham very quickly launched various paid-for “services” on KopTalk, all of which were based on the promise of having access to “insider” information about what was going on behind the scenes at Liverpool Football Club. Within a year of KopTalk’s launch these included premium-rate telephone information lines, a “deluxe” email service and a “VIP” forum.
As a result, KopTalk has always been the subject of criticism within the broader online LFC fan community. Within a few weeks of the forum’s launch, it was already being mockingly referred to by some people as “Kraptalk”. His critics have claimed that Duncan Oldham is motivated by a desire to make money rather than a heartfelt love for the football club and have accused him of fabricating transfer gossip for this reason, although Oldham himself has always refuted such claims.
At the end of 2001, a satirical site called Kraptalk was launched by Liverpool fans with the aim of poking fun at the techniques Duncan Oldham employed to drum up interest in KopTalk.
Over the years, a number of other Liverpool forums have been created as a result of a mass exodus of former KopTalk members who decided to leave the site. These include YNWA, TalkLFC, Est1892 and SixCrazyMinutes.
Early in 2006, the KopTalk Exposed blog was launched by concerned Liverpool fans, who wanted to hold Duncan Oldham’s behaviour up to public scrutiny. It has since amassed more than 1.6 million hits and over 800 articles. The site has always extended an open invitation to Duncan Oldham for him to come onto the blog and defend himself from the various accusations levelled at him, but Oldham has thus far failed to do so.
