What the Fan of the Future research didn’t understand about football fans

In September last year the European Club Association (then chaired by plotter-in-chief Andrea Agnelli) published research on the Fan of the Future. Looking at this report you can see why the ‘Dirty Dozen’ and their bankers were so sure they were on to something with a new super league of top team across Europe.

The research involved a national representative survey of 2,000 people across seven markets (UK, Spain, Germany, Poland, Netherlands, India and Brazil) and wanted to test hypotheses on fan affinity topics such as supporting more than one club, changing allegiances among younger fans, and wanting to support teams that do more than just play football.

The result was a market segmentation of football fans, and this is where the numbers must have got those executives smiling.

According the research only 25% of football fans were ‘Fanatics’ of ‘Club Loyalists’ who were emotionally attached to a specific club. The other three quarters were more interested in star players, big teams, and occasions, with the largest of any group ‘FOMO Followers’ preferring ‘European football over domestic for the perceived higher quality of entertainment that it offers.’

Time to sit back and count those Super League dollars…until everyone else heard about the plans.

So where did it all go wrong?

One thing that the research didn’t really consider was that the minority of fans who are emotionally attached to a team, provide the majority of the passion that makes everyone else want to watch. It was this passion that everyone rallied around, and football executives only needed some observational research (look out their office window) to see the results.

There was nothing wrong with the research the ECA commissioned, and it is an interesting read, but the last week has shown just how important loyal supporters are to clubs. They used to be the marketeers dream, as no matter what the quality of the product (the team) they always bought the tickets, but now you can sense a new Fan of the Future segment – the Activist.

Good luck to them.