Every time a club opens a fan zone, sends out a post-game survey or recruits a team of match day ambassadors or Here to Help team, I get a tremendous sense of pride and achievement. The Fan Experience Company have made those recommendations and over a number of years, it’s really helped to change the landscape at stadiums up and down the country. The experience that fans have now is virtually unrecognisable from the one when English football was in the doldrums in the 1980s and early 1990s with problems with hooliganism and stadium disasters. Families are now a key part of the experience, bringing the next generation into clubs and making the grounds and games totally accessible to all.

Since I started, I’ve created and sent 1,000 individual club reports that tell the story of the fan experience and provided recommendations for improvement at each of the eleven touchpoints (from the club’s website through to the post-game communications and everything in between). That’s around 15,000 recommendations in the last eight seasons alone. Along with benchmarking data and league tables, all of this data and insight helps the league and clubs create a continuous culture and drives a competitive environment where clubs help each other, but also strive to be better and climb the table (just as they do on the pitch).

As well as the obvious benefits of getting more younger fans to games, the work has also seen the league (and almost every club) achieve significant attendance increases, especially since the pandemic. As the levels of entertainment – beyond the 90 minutes – continue to expand both outside and inside the stadium, clubs can attract and retain fans even if they aren’t successful on the pitch. The correlation between the experience and attendances is incredible, and demonstrates that with focus and the right attitude (it’s never about the budget or size of the stadium) from everyone at the club, amazing results can be achieved and clubs can grow their fanbases and revenue by delivering in areas they can control.