Engagement: Disrespecting fans is simply bad business sense
Kevin Rye unpicks the benefits of fan engagement and explains why it is the route to sustainability
WHY is Fan Engagement important? My question is: how couldn’t you think it isn’t important? As if we needed reminding, the pandemic exposed to everyone just how vulnerable football clubs are - even Premier League clubs with their great wealth were put under financial strain because of lost income and money that had to be paid back in lieu of commercial and broadcasting deals that couldn’t be met. This is a truth that clubs further down who have lived on the edge for years have known for too long.
Secondly, the arrogance and short-termism of those clubs who thought they could just sign up to the European Super League without any thought to speak with the fans who would be affected, highlighted what happens when you think that the club is your property to do with what you will. They genuinely thought that such ‘strategic decisions’ were theirs and theirs alone.
These two events highlighted just what distinct and different businesses football clubs are, and just how, even if we sometimes look like customers, and we act like them (in that we pay and receive goods or services in return), our rationale - and that of fans across the globe - is overwhelmingly irrational. Most of us - and I include swathes of the much maligned international fans as well - support a club because of its identity, its geography, its history, its rich culture. We’re bound up with it. We don’t buy a shirt because we like the design. We don’t buy a season ticket because we’re hoping to see a perfect performance every week like some Broadway show. We do these things, most of the time, because we’re in love, and in love with something that shows its love in return all too rarely.
So that’s the reason Fan Engagement matters: It’s because fans are in a long-term relationship with their club. It is because, as Ryan McKnight has pointed out to me, when it comes to our clubs, we quite probably are in the longest relationship of our lifetimes.
If you run a club, think about that. Does it make sense, knowing that, behaving as though we’re mere customers, or that our views and feelings don’t matter? Whilst it might not lead us to walking away (though it sometimes does), it is not only disrespectful, it demonstrates terrible business sense.
As far as the future of Fan Engagement goes, I established the Fan Engagement Index to define, quantify, and measure Fan Engagement. I wanted to show how the best clubs act, to help bring the others up to that standard. I wanted to carve out a new generation of leaders in the field who would bring the game along with them, driving change and improvement. I wanted to provide solid evidence as to why it matters, and why it helps create sustainable clubs with a long-term view of their role beyond the end of the transfer window.
Bringing elements of the Fan Engagement Index into a future, more broad ‘Sustainability Index’ would represent a big step forward in the recognition that good Fan Engagement isn’t just be something that is a good because the relationship with fans requires it, but because it makes business sense.
Kevin Rye is an advisor for Fair Game and Director of Think Fan Engagement, who publish the Fan Engagement Index. He also lectures in Football Business and Media at UCFB, Wembley.