The Independent Football Regulator (IFR) wants everyone with an interest in football to have their say. We are conducting consultations on key areas of policy and invite clubs, fans, and other organisations to share their views.
Think Fan Engagement has responded to their most recent consultation, and have included our submission below.
We are pleased to see the IFR’s proposals to better embed credible fan engagement within English football. We believe the proposed approach of adopting a best practice framework provides flexibility for clubs of different sizes to implement fan engagement in a way that works for them – and most importantly their respective fanbases.
However, we believe that further guidance, training and support will need to be provided to ensure clubs are well equipped to meet the proposed principles. Resource constraints – time, people and money – are an ongoing challenge for clubs, so they will need support.
We believe the core outcome of the any fan engagement framework should be that fans are genuinely influencing their clubs’ decision making and will always be of central consideration.
We have provided responses to questions 20 – 27 of the IFR’s consultation paper below which offers our perspective and views on how the IFR’s framework can be conducive to this aim.
Throughout our responses we cite our latest research paper ‘Establishing Fan Engagement as a core value in the Football Industry during a New Era of Regulation’ which can be downloaded for free (external link).
The questions are numbered as per the IFR’s numbering, and form part of a much larger set of questions about other issues outside of our competence.
- Do you agree with the IFR’s proposal to set principles for fan engagement, rather than setting rules requiring clubs to engage with fans in specific ways?
Whilst we are pleased at the reference to the Gunning Principles, and to Think Fan Engagement’s work in this area, we are also of the view that further structure to fan engagement is necessary in football given the well established uniqueness of fans as a stakeholder.
As such, while we support the proposed approach of fan engagement principles, we are also of the view that every club should have some kind of ‘top-level’ structured engagement which takes the form either of a Fan Advisory Board/Supporters Board or a structured relationship with a supporters’ trust. We believe this should be a formal minimum standard applied to all regulated clubs.
This relationship should be enforceable via a contractual or legal process/agreement (such as ownership, part-ownership, shareholders agreement or similar legal agreement), or an MOU.
We do not consider a ‘fans forum’ or ‘town hall’ (large open meetings of fans), ‘focus groups’ (selected fans chosen to discuss a particular issue or undertake a specific piece of engagement) to be sufficiently robust as a form of relationship to meaningfully deal with the issues required.
It is our view that this type of engagement is too ‘arm’s length’, more easily controlled and difficult to enforce.
We would also like to see how the IFR decides what is regarded as ‘best practice’, and would advise a regular period of revision and discussion with industry experts.
- Do you agree with the IFR’s proposed principles for regular consultation on the relevant matters and taking fans’ views into account?
We would suggest three pillars, rather than the four proposed, merging two of them into one:
- Collaborative
- Two-way and genuine dialogue (incorporating ‘two way’ and ‘integrated’, but changing the latter to ‘genuine dialogue’)
- Do the fans have a genuine role in decision making or is it just ‘we heard you, and that’s useful in shaping how we make the decision that we want to make anyway’?
- Transparent
- This should be the term used instead of open, as it is more easily understood.
- Can you go above and beyond?
In our view, the key lies with whether transparency is a fundamental part of the process (currently referred to as ‘open’ in the IFR’s proposals).
We think the measure of whether the regime is working or not is not whether we have a set of principles, practices, or even specific enforcement, but transparency of process: do people know what’s going on? Is it published? Can it be understood?
- How do you define the relevant matters in the context of a football club and fan consultation?
- The club’s strategic direction and objectives
- The club’s business priorities
- Operational and match day issues, including ticket pricing
- The club’s heritage
- The club’s plans related to additional fan engagement
The above ‘relevant matters’ make sense as principal focal points. However, we would make the following observations:
- ‘Strategic direction’ is not something that is neatly defined or practiced in football. Does it mean a five-year plan? A ten-year plan? A three-year plan? No plan at all? Does it mean whatever the owner thinks when they take the club over, or indeed at any given moment in time?
- When it comes to ‘the club’s business priorities’, are fans permitted to discuss on-pitch objectives where they clearly clash with other objectives, such as ‘financial sustainability’ for example, or raise a specific issue of air travel within the UK where the club has committed to international or gamewide best practice or agreements on emissions and environmental sustainability?
- It is also important to acknowledge that the experience of some clubs is that some fan representatives struggle with scrutinising clubs on some of these issues, particularly the financial. As FABs and supporters’ trusts move into this new era, training and development of these representatives will become fundamental. This will enable the balance of ‘rights’ and ‘responsibilities’ to be maintained.
The reason we ended up with the IRF was because the owners of a very significant number of clubs simply didn’t think that the views of fans were actually all that relevant to their interests, and by extension, to those of the clubs that they owned.
If the regulator is to operate in part *for the benefit of fans* (our emphasis) then the structure of engagement and what clubs engage on matters. However, whether they genuinely influence decision making must always be of central consideration.
- Do you agree with the IFR’s proposed principles for the election of fan representatives?
Our latest research paper, ‘Establishing Fan Engagement as a core value in the Football Industry during a New Era of Regulation’ provides our position on democratic structures and processes, based on well established principles and processes, and need not be contentious. It says:
‘In relation to fan engagement, democratic processes should be used to underpin or create certain elements of the club’s activity. This might be the case with, for example, a supporter-elected director, elected by the membership of a supporters’ trust, or election of FAB members by the wider fanbase.
‘i) Where a democratic model is used by a FAB/Shadow Board or other representative body, elections should take place according to published and fair democratic processes – The FSA’s guidance on this is generally accepted to be best practice.’
For the avoidance of doubt, where a supporters’ trust plays the role, they are regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and as such are required to operate under transparently democratic rules.
- What features should individuals or groups have in order to be representative of fans’ views?
There is a constant challenge for broadly representative bodies to continue to be both relevant to and be representative when it comes to their fanbase.
With regards to a supporters’ trust for example, this is normally taken care of within the rules of the organisation as it is required to make efforts to be representative of the club’s fanbase, and this clause should be present in their rules if they seek such a role with the club. It is also permitted to coopt members with particular skillsets or representing specific sections of the club’s fanbase/membership.
FABs must be able to demonstrate similar.
These requirements for broadly representative groups should not prevent clubs from establishing relationships with other groups or interests within the fanbase.
- Do you agree with the IFR’s proposed approach to the annual fan engagement reporting requirement?
We believe the IFR should set criteria and guidelines for club’s backwards looking fan engagement reports. We think clubs should be required to disclose against the IFRs four pillars (which as per our response to question 21, we believe should be three pillars).
Clubs should be mandated to report on what they have done to meet each pillar and importantly the outcome of their fan engagement activities over the year/reporting period. This activities and outcomes approach will serve to promote transparency and instil accountability, i.e. demonstrate that clubs are truly implementing fans’ views in decision making. This ‘activities and outcomes’ approach has been successfully adopted in other industries. By way of example, see https://media.frc.org.uk/documents/UK_Stewardship_Code_2026.pdf
We propose that clubs’ fan engagement reports should be reviewed and approved by the FAB, supporters’ trust, or whichever is the principal body for the club’s structured fan engagement, ahead of publication.
The IFR should review all reports every year and provide feedback ideally on a club by club basis. However, we acknowledge the resource burden of this. If deemed as not feasible, an alternative approach would be for the IFR to publish summary paper highlighting good practice and areas of improvement.
- What support and guidance should the IFR give to clubs to help them comply with the annual reporting requirement? Do you agree with the proposed types of fan engagement discretionary licence condition the IFR can use?
A transparent scoring/review framework shared with clubs in the guidance document for the report (see link response to question 25) could work – and personalised feedback per clubs each year on their reporting. The crux will be:
- If their reporting is poor and not transparent enough that it sufficiently demonstrates they are meeting the principles and/or,
- They are unable to demonstrate they are meeting the principles because they aren’t actually doing so.
The key here is that the IFR will need to be particularly transparent in its assessments so it can defend any decisions to fans and engage with clubs on how they should improve.
How do we ensure sensible enforcement?
It is our view that the current proposals are vague, and 5.38 onwards is an escalation procedure where it seems that IFR will have a lot of discretion on how to assess the activities of the Clubs. We would not expect them to be happy about this in case disgruntled fans (or a section of them) mount campaigns to denigrate their efforts.
To avoid getting into a complex and escalatory situation with a club that is failing to reach the standards required, an independent report each year would help to confirm that engagement/consultation has been satisfactory.
- Do you have any other comments on the IFR’s proposals for fan engagement?
Training and development are critical to the proper role of fan engagement, as we have discussed in our response to Question 22.
We also agree with the submission of our colleague, ‘Consultation Guru’ Rhion Jones, who believes that there needs to be a tie up between the provisions/proposals concerning ‘Principle 5: Stakeholder Relationships & Engagement’ and the aspect of Corporate Governance covered in Chapter 4 of the consultation, titled ‘Club contributions to the local community.’
We agree with him that fans will have a real interest in these issues, and with his recommendation that they are cross-referred as best practice, and would seek to ensure that local communities and fans have an influence on these matters.