The State of Football: Fans as citizens, not customers.

The view of football fans as customers needs to be challenged, and the changing regulatory landscape represents a major opportunity for fans to reconsider their status and role in the modern game.

The Premier League era, with the influx of vast sums of cash in the form of broadcasting revenues, has seen our football clubs and the top-tier of the football pyramid transformed beyond recognition. Increasingly, fans lament their changing role in the game, no longer seeing themselves as the heart and soul of their clubs, but as mere customers of corporate machines. Disenfranchised, disempowered, disrespected and disregarded. Yet the emergence of Fan Advisory Boards (FABs), both a recommendation of Tracy Crouch MP’s Fan-led Review of Football Governance published in November 2021, and a new licensing condition from the 2023/24 season onwards under the Premier League’s Fan Engagement Standard, should encourage us all to reconsider  how we understand football fandom, and how we view ourselves as fans. 

We don’t just spectate anymore, we consume our football. Yet this is where any comparison between fans and customers runs out of steam.

The reduction of football fans to the role of customers appears to make sense: we spend our hard-earned money on tickets, replica kits, merchandise and official memberships. We don’t just spectate anymore, we consume our football. Yet this is where any comparison between fans and customers runs out of steam. You don’t have to look far to see highly engaged Premier League fans who are outraged at what they’re getting for their money. Manchester United fans’ opposition to the debt-financed mediocrity of the Glazer era; Everton fans exacerbated at the almost inconceivable profligacy and incompetence witnessed under the reign of Farhad Moshiri, or further down the league pyramid where fans at Bury FC, Derby County and Wigan Athletic have seen the very existence of their beloved clubs threatened. Yet we do not take our custom elsewhere. Manchester United fans do not defect and trade scarlet red for sky blue, just as Everton fans don’t cross Stanley Park to get a better product for their money. If anything, our collective resolve and demands for improvement is amplified - as illustrated by Everton fans’ unconditional and unswerving backing of their team in successive relegation battles. 

The Premier League is not a set of twenty businesses competing in an open market for a finite number of customers, but a configuration of tribal states with disparate footballing cultures, histories, traditions and identities.

A better analogy for the relationship between fans and their clubs in the Premier League era is that of state and citizen. Sovereign wealth funds, oligarchs, US private equity funds, global sports conglomerates - these are not the benevolent masters that fans should hope will have their best interests at heart. They are narcissistic leviathans happy to see us revel in any success their reign brings, but stubbornly unwilling to accept any criticism of their failures. The Premier League is not a set of twenty businesses competing in an open market for a finite number of customers, but a configuration of tribal states with disparate footballing cultures, histories, traditions and identities. We, the fans, are the citizens of these states, those in whom and from whom the distinct cultures, histories and traditions are produced, reproduced and transformed over time. We contribute to our clubs through our consumption of the football on display, yet our consumption is not conditional on the success of the team. Just as citizens continue to pay taxes for public services that are falling into disrepair, football fans spend because it is their duty to do so. We do not look at other clubs and say to ourselves “I wish I was a fan of that club”. We ask “why can our club not be like that?”

If we think of our relationship with our club in the state-citizen sense, we may feel that our fate is in the hands of despots. Yet, power in a nation state isn’t always the preserve of the ruling elite. The state evolves and institutions emerge which provide openings for the citizenry to exert more influence. With the establishment of FABs at all Premier League clubs, we are seeing such a potentially transformative institution emerge. Aimed at "engaging in two-way dialogue, exchanging information/ideas and securing feedback from a fan’s perspective”, FABs raise the possibility of fan empowerment and a democratisation of football fandom in England’s top tier. If, as expected, the Independent Regulator of English Football (IREF) is established following February’s white paper, FABs may see powers to veto decisions affecting the sale of the club and decision impacting upon club heritage enshrined in law. 

However, understanding how FABs will work is crucial to their potential success. Perhaps even more important is recognising how FABs will not function on the behalf of fans. These FABs are not conceived of as trade unions. There will be no one-person-one-vote system electing delegates to vote on the fans’ behalf in any congress; making executive decisions at the club, or submitting demands from the fanbase. Neither is the FAB conceived of as an adversary to the club which will serve as a protest movement. That is not to say FABs will be vapid talking shops, or agents of appeasement. Engagement does not mean polite acquiescence in the event our clubs are run poorly. Rather, engagement means maintaining direct channels with whichever Board is in situ in order to constructively criticise and drive change that will be received positively by the fanbase. FABs must work collaboratively with the club in times of success and in times of failure. They will act as conduit for effective dialogue and communication between the club and the fanbase regardless of performances on the pitch, and with a focus on building trust between the fans and the club. 

Our FAB members will be either elected by the official membership or appointed if they hold positions in other key supporter groups (such as Disabled Supporters Associations or a club’s official Fans’ Forums). FAB members will function as representatives with the more vital role of channeling information to the club and back to the fanbase. They will be charged with communicating information, forming expert working groups to help scrutinise club strategy, and engaging in constructive discussion on the future direction of the club with both club executives and the fanbase. It’s important to note that FAB members are entrusted by the entire fanbase, but like MPs in our House of Commons, have no fiduciary obligations to represent specific views of any fan or group of fans. This is why it is crucial that fans elect the right people to represent them, and not people who would abuse a position on their FAB to drive their own agenda or push partisan views at the expense of others. 

Your FAB is not there for you to follow and support. It is there to make sure that the club you follow and support know what you and other fans want - in both good times and bad.

However, our FABs have a dual-role as a consultative body. Our FAB members must serve as diplomatic envoys between the fanbase and the club. Much of their work will involve engaging with, observing and developing understanding of the fanbase, with a view to informing and reshaping club policy and strategy. This may seem like stating the obvious, but understanding this is key for fans and fan groups: you do not have to support your FAB or throw your support behind them unequivocally. If there are issues you and other fans feel strongly about, then your FAB can only be aware if you make noise about them. If they are aware of these issues, then they have a duty to the fanbase to explore solutions with the club and make changes to resolve the situation. Such issues could include, but are not limited to, the running of the club; concerns over finances; issues relating to club heritage and identity; stadium development; matchday atmosphere; club communication with fans, or any issues at all which you and others feel the need to address.

By viewing football clubs through the state-citizen lens, we can view the Board of Directors and Senior Management Team as the Royal Court. While individual fans are citizens, the fanbase is where we find the civil society groups emerging. Content creators, podcasters, bloggers, subscriptions/newsletters, official and unofficial supporter groups, Twitter spaces, bulletin boards, forums, away day coach organisers, unofficial merchandisers - you are the media, the educators, the trade unions, the chambers of commerce, the pressure groups, the NGOs, and the churches of your football club. Your FAB is not there for you to follow and support. It is there to make sure that the club you follow and support know what you and other fans want - in both good times and bad. By coming together and supporting your club in creative ways, promoting discussion and debate within the fanbase, fans can create a durable consensus that the FAB must present as a mandate for change which clubs will find it increasingly difficult to ignore.

FABs are a positive development which, if handled well, cannot be ignored by either the Premier League or the clubs which are now required to have them. However, if we fail to recognise how FABs could actually work to help empower fans - if we as fans continue to view ourselves as powerless customers buying a product we have no say in producing - and treat our FABs as some kind of complaints department, then we are missing the best opportunity in a generation to exert influence over those who make decisions at out clubs.

Football fans should take this chance to exert their influence and take some power back.