CAPITALISM demands that when you’ve made money, you have to generate more to keep the spiral going in the right direction. That’s what it is all about, continual growth and accumulation of wealth. Some aspects of capitalism are clearly unsavoury, heartless and inhumane, others try to combine the pursuit of money with some philanthropic good.
Rarely, in today’s world, do we say what we mean when it comes to the creation of money. We coat it with layers of deliberate vagueness, imply the reason we work is to fulfil a personal challenge or the desire to “make a difference”. There was a time when blatant capitalists, when making a list of ambitions, would simply say, “to become very rich, very quickly”. In the 21st century, they still want to be rich, but they won’t tell you that.
In the football industry, marketing departments talk of “increasing fan engagement”, “making stakeholders out of fans” and “embracing the community”. In many cases, this fan engagement can be roughly translated into “developing products and selling them to the fans”.
In some ways, football clubs have the most gullible of all client bases for even though the fans know their clubs pay ridiculously huge wages to players, ticket prices continue to be high and merchandise such as replica shirts is churned out on a conveyor belt (often made by exploited workers), they still climb over each other to buy season tickets. While some complain about modern football, the majority still buy into the business model, week-in, week-out.
Even though some clubs follow worthy causes and get their fans to be involved in community projects, the real essence of fan engagement should not be determined by how many charities or social projects they are involved in. True fan engagement needs to allow them to be instrumental in the running of the club – and not just in many operating tea bars, cleaning the stadium or donning a high-vis jacket and guiding traffic.
Without fans, lower level football simply would not exist and by that we don’t just mean League One and Two in the UK, but the entire non-league structure.
At the highest levels, fan engagement can be achieved by allowing supporters to be consulted on corporate level decisions that affect them – stadium development, club identity and culture, catering, ownership issues, club image and sustainability.
You sense that some clubs are actually terrified of letting fans near the boardroom for fear of losing control. Making clubs more transparent could unearth some problems with governance and financial integrity. Yet the fans deserve to know what goes on and how money is spent, especially at clubs claiming to represent the community.
The covid-19 pandemic has seen some smaller clubs appeal to their fan bases for financial support. Fans will, when the chips are down, invariably come to the rescue of their club, but rarely are they rewarded with a genuine stake in the organisation. Now is the time if there is a will to save the collapse of England’s football eco-system, surely?
Engagement should not merely be a commercial “in” with a vast body of fans, it should be about cementing and leveraging relationships and fostering a collective mission to drive a club forward, whether it is Sunderland or Sutton United or clubs even further down the pyramid.
Some clubs have succeeded in building such an environment, but until the bubble truly bursts, football’s traditional hierarchy will prevail. We may not have to wait too long.
@GameofthePeople
Photo: PA
GAME OF THE PEOPLE 