Once again we’re talking about how fans are outraged. It doesn’t seem to matter what the issue is, every week there’s another ‘scandal’ that results in ‘anger’ that clubs are ‘ignoring fans’ or ‘pricing fans out of football’. The Football Supporters Association (FSA) has its work cut out.
Week after week, another furious rant on a radio show, podcast, a plea to stop the madness in a column. It drives the news cycle, but it rarely seems to actually change anything. ‘Dynamic Pricing’, eye watering prices for European fixtures, fan fury in response. Now it turns out that Spanish club Valencia are hedging their bets on Dynamic Pricing and people are worried it’s the test case. There’s already serious talk that it won’t be long before season tickets are under genuine threat.
There are lots of people out there who are trying to make money out of football clubs, lots of football clubs who want or need to make money, and lots of bets on how to sweat sports investments. Events, podcasts, writers, vloggers, all talking about how to make it big. And football is as affected by technology as every other sector is at the moment, and so there are start-ups all over the place offering Solutions To Fan Engagement using Blockchain NFTs Crypto AI.
The reason we’re here was because football managed to convince government and enough people that they needed to be left unchecked to get on with it because of the benefit they delivered, economically and socially. In fact it’s why the Premier League has so many social programmes: it’s part of the deal, and it became even more so from 2008 or so as austerity bit and local government ceased to be able to provide for people.
What about the era of listening and engagement?
This is the era of of consultation, listening, of fan engagement, because it turns out that clubs as vehicles of owner self-interest alone haven’t worked out very well.
Yet on the other this is in an era of unprecedented change in the ways in which clubs listen to and interact with fans, of that there is no argument. This is the era of of consultation, listening, of fan engagement, because it turns out that clubs as vehicles of owner self-interest alone haven’t worked out very well.
In terms of the actual facts of it, the Fan Engagement Index demonstrates this. I’m in the middle of an analysis of score trends since the first edition in 2019, and it seems to be showing a pretty consistent improvement in the scores clubs receive for what they do, which means there has been and continues to be a material change in what’s done. Scores are increasing as clubs do more to listen and engage with their fans.
Except, as I’ve always been clear, though it’s comprehensive, the Index is a snapshot of the facts and models of engagement. The culture and how the structure makes that change is something else. The structure is the vehicle, the culture is the passenger and where they want to go.
Different choices to be made
Football clubs continue to make lots of choices that despite the structures of engagement in place, could be, but haven’t yet become, different choices. That’s because we’re in the process of moving from external pressure being the predominant way change is achieved – placards outside the directors box, marches to the stadium, petitions, etc, to internal pressure – directors sitting in rooms with real fans being argued with and not always being able to be confident that they’re correct. It’s not inevitable that you get huge change, but no existing culture can survive intact when many of the fundamentals around its core user (fans) are changing so much. And with the Independent Regulator on its way, surely that’s about to escalate.
One of the big factors in football is that particularly at the top level, it still sits in a place where it’s cosseted and told that it’s the most important person in any room. It dominates sporting calendars and all others must run to stay within ten miles of it. Professional Rugby Union is a failure, plenty in Rugby League are asking questions about whether the much talked about involvement of IMG is actually working, and cricket is rarely seen on mainstream TV. Most of the sports which make up the Olympics and Paralympics will fade back into obscurity after their moments in the sun. Football stands alone.
The clash of civilisations
I’m not a football sociologist, but I’ve been around fan engagement, activism and the business of the game for long enough to take a reasonable punt at what’s going on, and I’m increasingly convinced that a lot of football is in a combination of a sense of denial as to how things stand, whilst also not really knowing what to do to deal with it.
That means that when the regulator enters the fray (and we’re all anticipating the Autumn for the new Bill to be introduced by the new Government), it won’t be the case that everything suddenly changes, or the old order collapses like the death of empire. I’d wager not. But I keep asking myself: is football actually prepared for the impact, or is it just kind of ignoring it and hoping it won’t be so bad? The changing structure and culture of engagement that is now asserting itself, plus elements of regulation including statutory consultation that football is not prepared for, will have a big – potentially profound – impact. It can’t really fail to.
As I said last week it’s only really in the last ten or so years that organised protest and dissent hasn’t been the principal way that fans get their voices heard. It is also a truth that the culture in most clubs still isn’t geared towards the new way of doing things. Whatever clubs, leagues and others do to try to hold things back, I very much doubt that can continue.
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