It’s been four years since the Premier League announced that every club in the competition would have to have a Fan Advisory Board. It wasn’t long after the collapse of the European Super League, around the time the fan-led review began, so we’ve had quite a long time to take stock.
I think we need to be much clearer about what they are, what they’re not, what they do and why that matters.
First, they are club internal bodies: a club wants and needs fans to scrutinise the big, strategic issues that a football club deals with. It’s a really important thing for fan engagement, because it provides a check and balance of the body at the centre of decision making: the club board.
This isn’t completely new. What we call ‘Fans Parliaments’ played and still play in some cases, quite similar and useful roles at clubs. In fact in many cases, they morphed into the new FABs. But the important factor is that they are internal and not independent, and for good reasons.
This brings me to my second point: the reason that a FAB exists is because the club has willed it into being and wishes it to exist because it finds it useful.
This shouldn’t be a problem: having a group of your principal stakeholders at the centre of decision making to challenge and ask questions is a good thing for any business, particularly football clubs. However, it’s when we forget that they are not meant to be independent of the club that we have a potential problem. Absence of independence is the price of having them, and it necessarily restricts what they can do and say.
Finally, they are there to improve the actual decisions the board makes, and the processes behind them. They should be able to read, have explained and understand matters such as business & fan engagement strategy, ticketing, access and financial reporting. Their ability to stray into playing matters should be limited by its relevance to the overall direction or finances of the club concerned. For example, if the club repeatedly hires and fires head coaches or managers, that could be a problem that needs discussion because it indicates internal chaos, crisis or lack of vision, and the club should in my view be obliged to explain why that happens to its FAB. That is why they often have to sign non-disclosure agreements that prevent them from discussing certain issues publicly. I had to sign something similar when I was on the board of the Dons Trust, owners of AFC Wimbledon. There’s nothing wrong with that, but the FAB is bound by that or something similar to that regardless.
Why does all this matter? At the FSA AGM earlier in June I was listening to the General Counsel of the Independent Football Regulator (IFR), David Riley. He was taking questions and talking with delegates, and a major issue was about who they would be speaking to in order to understand what is going on at a club.
Both the IFR itself and the FSA, as the body representing fans in English football, are talking about FABs as ‘fan organisations’. Indeed, some FABs are even members of the FSA itself. In that sense they are being regarded as equal to other, independent organisations, be they supporters’ trusts, independent supporters associations or others. That is a problem.
Whilst there is every reason for the IFR to speak with FABs, their status as internal bodies means they are reliant on the club to exist, and whose role is to hold the club’s board in check. ‘Independence of mind’?, yes. Absolutely. Actual ‘independence’? Absolutely not.
In not realising that difference, we vest in them something that they cannot provide, and set them up for a fall. More concerning, we might end up excluding some extremely important independent voices that can speak sometimes more candidly about issues at a football club. If FABs are going to be as effective as they should be, and if the IFR is going to have the full picture at every club, that really matters.
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