Love your club, but despair sometimes about football?
Join the club.
I’m happy to tell you that the first guest post on The Good Football is by Hayley Davinson, a talented copywriter who shares my love for the good kind of football. The first time we met here in Barcelona, what was supposed to be a professional networking meeting quickly turned into a long bonding time over our irrational love for the teams back home and the ins and outs of long-distance football relationships.
Enjoy this great read about one of the topics we’ve ranted about over a cup of specialty coffee (bless her for putting up with my coffee snobbishness) or tea.
Hayley Davinson analyses the current state of top-tier football from the stands as a long-suffering Fulham supporter, a board member of the Fulham Supporters’ Trust and a co-founder of the female supporter group, the Fulham Lillies.
The wooden seats in the Johnny Haynes stand within Craven Cottage were installed in 1905 and miraculously survive to this day. Today, a fan will attend games at Fulham who will have had a season ticket in that stand since the early 1960s. From when they first sat in those seats to today, the sport they love has changed so much that their youthful self wouldn’t recognise much else beyond those seats.
They will have seen football hooliganism grow from random fights outside stadiums to organised groups and intense violence. They will have witnessed the conception of the Premier League (though Fulham lived two leagues and a world away from that glamour in 1992) and seen women’s football go from illegal, something they would have struggled to find the results for, to new leagues, new audiences and an awareness of the sport that was unimaginable for so long.
The custodians of these seats, the season ticket holders, are worlds apart from the football fan stereotype that dogged the sport throughout the 1970s and 80s. The common association between football stadiums and that culture has long since gone, and what now cultivates on a matchday in stadiums is a far more inclusive environment that brings together the best of humanity. Conversations between strangers, lasting friendships, infectious energy that pulses through stadiums and beyond. If it were possible to bottle, it would have been packaged, sold and probably listed on the stock market. Thankfully, that isn’t an option.
That’s not to suggest that the sport isn’t trying, however. The beast that is men’s football, plus the growing commercial interest in the women’s game, has monumental opportunities for money to be made. And those making the money are rarely the people who build the culture that makes football what it is.
More people are flocking to the sport. More females are watching the men’s game, and the women’s game is expanding everywhere, as are international fans. In essence, there are more markets to sell to. Everyone wants to see more of it. That progress has a cost. And this is the crossroads that we find ourselves at now.
THE CROSSROADS OF INCLUSIVITY & TRADITION
We, the inclusive fans, want the game we love to be accessible to everyone. But stadiums only have so much space.
Eyes on screens can multiply exponentially, as we’ve learned from the scale of growth of TV revenue deals. But stadiums? There’s a limit. You can move a stadium, but only within reasonable terms without upsetting an entire fanbase and the wider football community if done too insensitively. You can increase capacity with the development of stands or stadiums. But there will always be a strict cap. So as the game grows, the fans diversify, the scope of a fan widens, the seat itself remains the same, but the demand for it will change dramatically.
To the traditional match-going fan, that seat is something like an heirloom. That family is the reason that the seat has grown in value. They are the equivalent artisans that move to rundown areas, open up independent shops, markets and restaurants, and then see their rents skyrocket as their surroundings and neighbours have changed beyond recognition. As friends have moved on, they have begun to know fewer names of the ticket holders around them and become familiar with the signs of an away fan in a home area, keeping their thoughts to themself (usually, there are always some noted exceptions that stand up and celebrate an away goal). The seat has suffered from gentrification, and now they hardly recognise it at all.
This is the situation for many clubs within the men’s game in the major leagues. No matter the size, top-tier football sells. There’s nothing in principle wrong with that - it’s a popular sport, people enjoy watching it, and a business needs to operate. But the seat itself has been hit by the crossfire of heirloom and asset.
This leaves the traditional fan feeling lost. This crossfire has existed within the sport for years. There’s always been ‘the money side’. But it has never come quite so directly after them before. Particularly not the season ticket holder, the lifeblood of the club’s cash flow before the TV deals exploded. But now, the opportunities have widened. Tourism in football is only growing, particularly in popular city-break destinations. But then, when fans will travel to Wrexham for a game, anywhere is up for grabs. So this fan feels less valued, less committed, and not optimistic about their future, for themselves and certainly not for their offspring to continue these traditions.
IS THERE A SOLUTION TO FIGHT FOR?
Some traditional fans already consider the war lost. The beast is already bigger than they even realised it to be throughout the last 20 years of growth. Men’s football is already a juggernaut. Many believe there isn’t the power to influence.
It’s not a simple fight, either. It isn’t about ‘getting rid’ of the new fans. Anyone who loves their club loves seeing new people introduced to it, to its quirks and novelties. Without the growth, there wouldn’t be fans dreaming about sitting in the quirky wooden seats of a mid-table football club. Individually, many of the club’s owners aren’t to blame either. There’s a market; they solve a need. It’s perhaps not the heartwarming story of ‘local business owner comes good and saves the local football club from extinction’, but what fan doesn’t want to see their club in the top tier?
HOW MUCH IS TOO MUCH?
It’s a question many ‘legacy’ fans have already contemplated. Is my club the same as the one I fell in love with? Foolishly, for those who can still afford it, the answer is still yes. All those reasons that made people fall in love with being in their home stadium on a matchday haven’t changed. Life consistently changes around us, and nothing is permanent. But Craven Cottage and the Johnny Haynes Stand continues much the same as they always have. For us lifelong fans, the experience has become a ritual. Only a price we cannot afford or ill health will force us to go elsewhere.
This addiction has always made the product a marketer's dream. Deviate from your core values as a product or service; the customer often goes elsewhere. Even Coca-Cola and Nike must be careful with how much they can deviate from their values. But football has never worked like that. My Fulham is not someone else’s [insert your club here]. We are fools, and we know it. But everyone has a breaking point.
So where is the seedling of hope, if there is one?
COMMUNITY AT ITS CORE
To me, it’s the many people who nod their heads as they read these words. The love of a football club is sacred and universal, and we share common ground in that joy.
There’s an opportunity to build upon what makes football so enduring - fan power.
Football has repeatedly overcome challenges and adversity throughout its history, proving its popularity is due to its ability to bind people together. It requires faith in the power of the collective voice to shape the game's future in the way we want.
The connection between old and new fans will help the cause, not hinder it. By caring about the cause and learning about how this club got where it is today, the fans who care about a club's future increases. The fan’s voice gets louder.
Collectively, fans have the most powerful voice in the room. They always have. As empty stadiums during Covid and the rejection of the European Super League have shown, the game isn’t without fan power. That voice getting louder can only help the supporter cause, not dwindle it. Only by knowing what fans want - together - can they take on the juggernaut, a multi-billion-dollar industry. However, as a wooden seat installed in 1905 can attest, something magic about this sport keeps it rooted precisely as it is, even when the rest of the world changes at a meteoric pace around it.
To get more from Hayley or inquire about her work, go to her website, or find her on Linkedin and Instagram.
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I very much agree with you, and really, you're making a far better statement by staying away. But the sad thing is, those seats just get sold elsewhere and the club's aren't worried about losing that old-school fan. The game has moved on in so many ways, but foolishly there are still many of us clinging on to the belief it hasn't been taken away from us quite so much.