It used to be that fans, their representatives, had to force their way into the reckoning with a club with guile, courage, political nous, and frequently, investment – buying shares.
Like the fans of Swansea City, chasing their owner Tony Petty out of town, or Wrexham fans turning up outside a former owners house in a pink taxi. Sometimes it was behind the scenes meetings where an effective coup was engineered to remove a damaging owner or director (something I had to do more than once). I remember some more amusing stories from people like Dave Matthews Jones, an early supporter director at Cambridge United, about how he was a curio for a lot of opposition directors. I have many more of these stories you’ll be pleased to know, but that’s the past. For most of us anyway.
For a number of years, football clubs, leagues, and organisations like the modern day FSA and my alma mater, Supporters Direct, have built structures of engagement in football between clubs and fans. From the days of meetings with no record where anything could be denied by the club if they fancied it, to an era where it’s increasingly common for football clubs to discuss their ‘strategic plans’ and financial challenges with Fan Advisory Boards (FABs) and supporters’ trust elected directors. Some clubs even publish their board minutes now.
We are now ‘engaged with’ on an almost constant basis, being surveyed sometimes to within an inch of our lives!
‘Two Way Dialogue’ is trumpeted, new ‘structured relationships’ celebrated, and clubs are increasingly proclaiming their use of fan feedback in decision making. We are now ‘engaged with’ on an almost constant basis, being surveyed sometimes to within an inch of our lives!
Many clubs are even beginning to adopt some of the language of ‘co-creation’ that we often see in the community development field from experts like Oliver Holtaway. Fans are given the opportunity to be formally ‘consulted’, so much that we now have fans getting worked up about the Gunning Principles and how they will apply in the new, regulated game we’re headed towards (ask my colleague and Consultation Guru Rhion Jones).
The shift is significant, very important – and quite exciting – that clubs want to use the role of fans in a way that helps inform how they make decisions, plan better, do better. Except, given campaigns such as the FSA’s ‘Stop Exploiting Loyalty’, and matchday protests at Manchester United, is all this engagement really effective enough? And if it’s not, what do fans do, how do clubs respond, and who is responsible?
I just don’t think we’re in the era where fans should feel the need to stand, metaphorically or literally, outside the directors box with a placard to get the club to think again about something.
I’ve been tracking all of this since 2018/2019 via the Fan Engagement Index, and yes, clubs have manifestly improved what they do in so many ways. The structures of engagement are frequently impressive, as I’ve outlined. I can also see the culture shifting, particularly, when I speak with clubs directly. However, I don’t think we’re really there yet, and a couple of things still concern me.
First of all, the place of protest. I’m not saying that protesting isn’t effective. In Germany, a very different environment, it has been done to great effect. Protesting has its place. However, I just don’t think we’re in the era where fans should feel the need to stand, metaphorically or literally, outside the directors box with a placard to get the club to think again about something.
I’m not totally convinced yet that some owners, administrators – even maybe some fan representatives – ‘get’ what the implications of all this engagement is. Owning a football club is not an ordinary pursuit, and while an owner might have specific ambitions for it, some of those might have to be challenged if they’re to walk that talk.
They might have to start saying no to the person telling them to raise ticket prices as a quick revenue fix because of the damage it does to the trust the club’s fan engagement teams have patiently built with fans for years. They might have to start thinking that all the lovely money coming from broadcasters that helps fund their punt at promotion, a cup, or European glory, comes at too costly a price because it results in fixtures being moved around at a whim – even though the league has rules or guidance with the broadcasters in place to ‘prevent’ this. Owning a football club is not an ordinary pursuit, and while an owner might have specific ambitions for it, some of those might have to be challenged if they’re to walk that talk.
This is where we come to the real nub of the issue. Are the clubs themselves, who let’s remember own the competitions (all leagues are the sum of their member clubs who own the key decisions), prepared to begin taking a different view on these issues? Are they prepared to put a marker down that says ‘we accept football needs to be broadcast, and that money helps to fund the game at all levels, but there are some basic rules, including a prohibition of these kick-off times in order to protect fans’?
Because I keep coming back to the fundamental purpose of all this fan engagement, which in itself is good and important. Then I look at the incoming regulator and ask myself what is the sum total of all this? And what are the implications for football?
The conclusion I draw is that fans are no longer outsiders. They can’t be, not if all this structured dialogue and engagement is to mean anything. It’s not possible for clubs to simply do what they wish. We have, fundamentally, finally realised that the phrase ‘a football club is more than just a business and fans are more than just customers’ actually means something. And if fans are no longer outsiders, and clubs are more than just a business, then we have the perfect recipe for things to really change if we want it.