The phrase Fan Engagement is ubiquitous these days.  Twenty years ago, when we founded the Fan Experience Company, it was seldom heard. Some of that we can put down to social media, of course, since back then, I didn’t have people shouting at me to produce more ‘content’.

In recent times, of course, several interpretations have emerged – from the specific (e.g. the act of conducting dialogue with supporters) to the more generic (i.e. valuing fans).

At the present time, with the Football Governance Bill making its way through the UK Parliament and the Premier League and EFL changing their rules to oblige member clubs to annually publish a Fan Engagement plan, I have a concern that it will be seen by senior club executives as a ‘regulatory requirement’ to be adhered to under threat of sanction. 

And that is certainly not what Fan Engagement is.

Mark Bradley

@fanexperienceco

Mark works all over Europe helping associations, leagues and clubs to understand and improve fan engagement and their match day experience.

The Fan Experience Company was founded in 2005, and they have carried out almost 3,500 assessments as well as other fan engagement and matchday experience improvement projects in more than 20 countries.

In November 2022, The Fan Experience Company assessed matches at the FIFA World Cup in Qatar.

Contact Mark: [email protected]

Our fervent belief is that Fan Engagement is the strategic concept by which clubs engage and retain supporters by delivering value to them.  More specifically, I defined it as:

‘Everything we do to understand, to protect and to develop the fan’s emotional investment in the club.’*

Those working in non-sports settings will immediately recognise this as Customer Engagement, for in the services industry success hinges on creating customer value.

A business that offers products or services to customers may quickly feel the competition of others who wish to undercut on price or to add functionality and extras, but if the customer feels a strong emotional connection to that business, their loyalty will endure.

Senior football executives may scoff and declare that fans’ loyalty is guaranteed. They’re not going to throw their toys out of their pram after a 0-6 home defeat and start supporting the club down the road. That’s true.  You take it and move on because, as a fan, you understand that this comes with the territory.

The reasons for falling in love with a football club are much more deep-rooted and have more to do with family, friendships, the heroes you worshipped as a child and the memories of your youth.

What matters more to fans is that their support is reciprocated in those areas over which the club has far more control, such as the levels of customer service provided by the club, the quality of the match day experience, the extent to which the club listens to fans, the way the club deals with concerns and, most of all, a genuine and sincere appreciation of what it means to be a devoted follower of the club.

If clubs simply regard Fan Engagement as an externally-imposed set of regulations or an obligation to listen, we’ll get nowhere.

But if senior executives see Fan Engagement as football’s own Customer Engagement, then they will quickly see the value of doing this – a value which is very much commercial and measurable in financial terms too.

The fan who feels valued attends more games. If she is a season ticket holder, she won’t miss a match - and if she does, she’ll use the club’s reselling facility to ensure another fan can take her seat rather than leaving it empty. She will come to the stadium earlier, her ‘dwell time’ will increase and she’ll spend more too. She’ll be first to order the new kit and she’ll be walking advert for the club from the minute she reaches the front of the queue on the day that it was launched and pays for it.

Most of all, she’ll become a walking ambassador for the club – the ultimate aim of every Customer Engagement strategy in any non-sporting business.

Over the course of our 20 years’ experience, we’ve seen fans change too. The profile of the match-attending fan has evolved considerably in terms of gender and age while, over the same period, their attitudes and behaviours have altered too.

So, the club that offers much more than a football match stands the best chance of engaging (and retaining) the whole spectrum of the make-up of a match-going fan.

This can be evidenced by the rise of the fan zone: a relatively new concept in British football that has quickly evolved from a ‘nice to have’ (prior to the pandemic) to a basic hygiene factor only three seasons later.

This has clearly evolved to meet the need of fans who have encountered this experience when travelling around Europe or the USA (or, maybe even, when enjoying the experience at an expansion sport in the UK, such as NFL or Major League Baseball).

But there is one expectation that embraces the diverse spectrum of fans that attend (or are considering attending) games right now: the need to feel personally valued.

Consider the 0-6 home defeat. As a long-term devotee, it’ll probably ruin your weekend (and you may have to keep your head down for a few days beyond that) but your umbilical dedication to the cause will not be impacted – unless, in our experience, your match day experiences indicate that the club has stopped caring for you.

I don’t believe that the 0-6 battering is a meaningful risk to the future loyalty of the new fan either, as long as the club is offering him much more than a game of football (and also taking care of him at every touch point in the match day journey). But younger and newer fans won't provide the longevity that previous generations have without a very good reason.

The numbers back the above up very well. When we worked with the EFL to introduce the Family Excellence scheme in 2006/07, the previous 3 seasons had shown nil growth in the area of Junior Season Ticket sales.  A decade of clubs caring for new families and innovating the family experience later and sales had increased by 45%. That's the power of engaging younger fans properly.

So don’t be tempted to regard Fan Engagement as an unwelcome intrusion from a regulator or a reason to roll the eyes and start ‘ticking the boxes’. See it for what it is: a commercial opportunity for forward-thinking clubs.

Want to engage more? Contact Mark at [email protected]

*From the Study Certificate in Fan Engagement (Study Certificate / Barça Innovation Hub, 2020). See https://elearning.barcainnovationhub.com/product/certificate-in-fan-engagement/