Are Fans Really Important?

If football is the most important of the least important things, then are fans the least important of the most important things in football?

Seriously. Everyone says that fans are important, even ‘super-important’, but do they really mean it?

Often, when we are told how important fans are, it’s usually at a time of crisis. The European Super League, for instance, saw fan power rise to prominence and reminded us of their strength in numbers. The recent State of the Game report has laid bare how precarious club finances are and what the implications for fans are, but again it will be met with a collective shrug. Football has survived a bigger crisis than this. And we’re all still here.

Covid was that crisis.  Fans being locked out of stadiums for a year and a half while football was played out in front of empty stands. That was when the ‘football is nothing without fans’ rhetoric really kicked into gear. But, with the benefit of hindsight, was it all just telling fans what they wanted to hear?

Like a badly-dubbed movie, the words we hear don’t fully align with the way the people saying them are acting. So is this ‘fans are important’ talk simply lip service to make us feel important, so that we keep spending money, rather than a concerted effort to put us anywhere near the top of anyone’s priority list?

The pandemic, or at least the aftermath of it, was the time when I thought things might actually – really - change. The empty stadiums had hit leagues and clubs hard financially, but they’d also demonstrated what fans bring to the party on the field too. The lack of atmosphere turned games into glorified practice sessions. Truth was, and it maybe took a global pandemic to see it, football – if not exactly nothing – was very little indeed without fans there watching it.

The players – in fact everyone involved – are, when fans are removed from the equation, merely a husk of what it is with them. During Covid, they were reduced to just being young men (football pretty much abandoned the women’s game and anything other league that didn’t make serious money during the pandemic) running around on a grass rectangle while viewers watched on TV partly because old habits die hard and mainly because they had little else to do. But it did show – starkly – the difference that fans make.

Back to Life, Back to Reality

As it happened, after eighteen months the worst of the virus had run its course, and football was able to return to ‘normal’ very quickly. We’ll never know what would have happened had that year and a half stretched to two, or three, years. Many clubs would not have survived, decimating communities, but the impact on the wider game could have been equally devastating.  Had fans not returned – without restrictions – in August 2021, football might not have recovered as well as it did. But fans did return, and the delayed Euros and England’s run to its final had reinvigorated them ahead of the new season.  Stadiums would thankfully be full again.

And just as fans almost became very important, suddenly they were less important again.

That relatively speedy return to ‘normality’ also meant that the old attitudes towards fans returned almost as quickly. Yes, fans were ‘really important’ and football was ‘nothing without them’ but in truth, they were platitudes doled out while the money people got back to the business of making a profit.

Because profit margins are definitely nothing without fans.

But beyond their obvious value as football’s answer to cash-flow, the reality is that fans aren’t really seen as being that important at all. Sure, there are people at the leagues and clubs who live and breathe fans, but they are continually marginalised and eventually lost to the game if they stray too far outside their lane.

The big dogs don’t see fans in the same way. Or not many anyway. And I don’t need to go anywhere near as far back at the pandemic to show why. In the last few weeks and months, I’ve seen countless examples. The bigger question maybe shouldn’t be ‘are fans really important?’ but rather ‘who values them the least?’ - it's quite hard to tell.

The Clubs

Last week I took a colleague from the US to see an EFL game. The EFL are – rightly - renowned for having clubs with great matchday experiences. But the club I went to had staff outside the stadium who had absolutely no idea where anything was. We are constantly pushed back and forth in contrasting directions by stewards who might not have even been to the stadium before, but if they had, they didn’t let it show. Luckily, I knew the stadium layout better than they did, or we’d have done two complete laps of the stadium instead of watching the first half. Did that club think fans were important?

The fortnight before had seen the news saturated by the Manchester City affair, and the State of The Game report by the IFR. The latter’s conclusion was that most clubs are virtually insolvent but continue to overspend – on players – while reliant on their owners to prop them up. If they didn’t, the club could die and thousands, or even millions, of fans could lose their beloved club. Do those writing the cheques think those fans are important?

Man City’s fans are showing predictable defiance against the Premier League, and opposition club fans who taunt them non-stop, but those City fans have also been let down by the club’s owners if they are guilty and not – as they protest – being unfairly condemned. Defiant or not, were the loyal fans (who’d been there long before the club was acquired by anyone from Abu Dhabi) and their feelings ever considered? Did the owners think they were important?

The Leagues

The Premier League not only forces fans listen to the referees offer their ‘after review’ rationale but also refuses to allow clubs to show footage of incidents inside the stadium. So a ticket-buying fan has very little idea as to why - for example - a goal is allowed, or disallowed, at the game they’ve paid to watch. They just get a bald bloke trying to briefly explain in a Yorkshire accent - while everyone watching on TV has already seen it from twenty or more different angles and knows everything. If it’s an offside decision, the fans in the stadium don’t even get an explanation. So do the leagues think fans are important?

The Governing Bodies

FIFA - or its leader - wanted to sell some of football’s biggest tournament without mentioning it to its own council. Mainly so that some US companies could further monetize fans; their appetite whetted by the way that they’d made them pay miles over the odds for tickets, transport, parking and everything else during the summer’s World Cup. Do they think fans are important? For anything other than as cash cows I mean?

The Authorities

Football fans can’t drink alcohol in view of the pitch as we know. This law was made decades ago (1985 in England, even earlier in Scotland) because of the hooliganism within football at the times. That’s like saying that modern aeroplanes should all be grounded because the Wright Brothers crashed. Football, and the law, has not moved with the times, and as such fans are treated very differently to how they are in other sports and in football in many other countries. The UK police too have been quick to try to stop it on safety grounds, despite trials and evidence to the contrary. And what do thee fans think? Who cares? They’ve been given virtually no say in over forty years as successive governments and law enforcement have made the decision for them. Do any of them think fans are important?

The Brands

Football fans pay somewhere between £60 and £100 for the club’s official replica shirt depending on the club and league. These shirts are – often – made in factories for less than £1. The working conditions are politely described as ‘grim’ and the workers themselves describe being yelled at if targets are missed. The discrepancy between the manufacturing costs and the retail price are so vast as to be almost unimaginable. Someone somewhere is making a lotof money from these shirts while the prices in club shops, online sites and retail outlets continue to rise so that £100 will soon be the norm. This is a perfect example of how brands have learned that football fandom and the loyalty it exudes can be exploited to the maximum. Do they think…well, you know it by now.

But this general indifference to fans should surprise no-one.

Because if a global pandemic and 18 months of empty stadiums don’t change our views on how to treat them, then - let's face it - what will?