The high level of Football Fan engagement and passion

Would you like your audiences to feel that way about your industry?

Judging by concerns on the low engagement of customers and employees. Would not many leaders love to have the level support for their industry that football fans demonstrate?

The problem is that the way fans think is likely to be different to the way business leaders think. While both will welcome operational success and recognition for their brand and industry, fans commitment will involve their group loyalty to the game and their club’s representation of their community, city or area. While poor performance and poor prospects will cause a shareholder to sell, failure of a football club prompts the anger of fans not their exit. They feel the club is part of them and they want to see action to change its fortunes but without threatening its connection with their community and way of life.

Football clubs has long been owned and influenced by successful local entrepreneurs but given the success of the game it has attracted global owners. You will remember back in April the ferocious fan driven attack on wealthy football club owners who, after just three days had to scrap a business plan to establish a new European league. That group would have freed its members from the threat of relegation and financial penalty. Fans have great power based on their emotional unity so a club’s business plans must be alert to commercial thinking which might be seen to be at odds with the basic values and behaviours of the fans. That emotional unity is what makes fans so powerful, they don’t work for you, they don’t depend on you for all the tangible aspects of a relationship – earnings, advancement etc. They can afford to throw the book at you. In practical terms you cannot push back. You have no hold on them.

That’s true for all of us when it comes to emotional relationships with a business. How many of us would act like fans if we thought something precious and close to us at work was under threat? And try to change it rather than just leave? What would send us to the barricades, a demonstration or becoming a passionate activist? What threats would stir us? The future of a political party? the BBC? The NHS? Education? Climate change? The Monarchy? The Rule of Law? All of these could generate action but how united would it be compared to football fans who appear to have unquestioning unity? Interesting to see what impact the racial abuse on social media post the England/Italy final may have on fans. What % of fans did the abusers truly reflect ditto the Bend the Knee booers? I do not believe fans attitudes and behaviour match those of extreme political groups or religious sects. How well do Clubs and the FA understand their fans?

What points does this hammer home for me?

1. All of us deep down have the capacity to feel as strongly as fans do. It’s within us all
2. Family, friends, where we live, and our liberty will be the basis for most peoples’ potential passion when threatened ditto a personal interest, our work, or a great cause
3. We want others to feel strongly about what we do and for whom
4. Business leaders want all involved to have cause to trust, respect the organisations they lead

I can see a potential new battle ground as some fans boo the players themselves and their own ‘Bend the knee’ demonstration against racial injustice publicly supported by England manager Gareth Southgate.

The problem is that it is emotional rather than commercial. The new League idea would have increased financial security, but that was no match for the passion, power and unity of the fans welded together by a sense of pride and belonging representing their community and way of life.

We are all Fans at heart.
Simon Barrow