The Missing Generation

In the absence of opportunities to go to the game together, my son and I have found an alternative habit. We never miss an episode of BBC Scotland’s A View from the Terrace.

To term it irreverent football chat would demean its talent for honouring football’s great truths. Eschewing the usual north-of-the-border obsession with the Old Firm, it follows less trodden paths like the story of Clydebank’s fall and recent rise, the life of the ground staff at Montrose, a fondness for championing lower league players and Duncan McKay’s occasional match day cameos (from guesting as Raith Rovers’ mascot to marking out the pitch at Forthbank Stadium). As our readers will know, we have always felt that lower league Scottish football hides its light under a bushel. This show pushes the branches aside and lets the light shine through.

Recently the programme had a feature on Football Manager, complete with anecdotes from those familiar with the addictive pastime. One proudly described his achievement of taking Partick Thistle to Champions League glory while the game creators’ Scotland representative reflected on some of the data challenges of keeping everything real. 

This ‘remote’ engagement with the game we love expresses itself in many ways these days, especially amongst the young. My son’s pals are into FIFA, fantasy football, putting the odd bet on & streaming the odd game. The fact that the pandemic came along and made it impossible to go to a game wasn’t an issue for most of them because most young people don’t associate support with showing up.

For super-elite clubs, this is but a mere trifle, but for traditional attendance-based revenue clubs, this could be much more than a custard pie. If your club generates 70%+ of all of its income from the match day and huge swathes of future generations are now preferring to experience your club digitally, at what point do you stop being a going concern? 

There’s a squeeze coming for these clubs. The pandemic will prevent significant numbers of core supporters from returning any time soon (estimates vary, but are in the range of 10-30%), while the super-elite ‘power grab’ picks away at the opportunities for the less garlanded. Add the habits of the next generation of fans into the mix and the cliff edge anxiety of the last year might become the norm.

It is also troubling to find that much of the research into ‘the modern fan’ also comes with the assumption that we are dealing with a super-elite club with a global fan base. Monetising these fans and their engagement via initiatives like Socios means that distance is no object when it comes to making the cash register rattle. 

So, what do attendance-based clubs do? How does a club go about understanding these challenges? What realistic and practical steps could be taken to address them?

The ECA (European Club Association) recently published research entitled The Fan of the Future: Defining Modern Football Fandom. In it – and among other key drivers of young fan habits – it pinpoints the following factor:

‘Consumers today expect brands, including football clubs, to focus beyond their core offering. It is no longer enough for clubs to compete; they need to demonstrate a level of social responsibility and community awareness aligned with fan values.’

Of course, this returns us to a favourite subject: club identity, purpose and values. We know that those clubs who are visibly motivated by strong beliefs and causes are capable of attracting what Dan Lambert of Bohemian FC terms ‘high quality fans’.

When Darren and I spoke to him on the Fan Experience Experience podcast (https://fanexperienceco.com/podcast/special-dan-lambert-bohemians-fc/), Dan talked about supporters who were motivated as much by the team’s performance as by the club’s commitment to issues that were important to the residents of north Dublin. 

How many clubs achieved their best ever commercial performance during the pandemic? The ways Bohs live up to their values doesn’t only resonate in Phibsborough, but also globally, as followers of Lewes FC and their equality commitment know. That means that when new kit is launched to support local campaigns (such as the case with the recent Fontaines DC anti-homelessness 3rd shirt), the reach is multiplied. In most other cases, however admirable a club’s community work, no one outside of the region notices. How does your club use its intrinsic identity, purpose and values to extend its reach and to attract people to match days?

Marcus Rashford’s emergence as a child food poverty campaigner and Hector Bellerín’s investment in Forest Green’s environmental cause have also shown another dimension of the potential of embracing social purpose: that of the individual player. When it comes to engaging future generations in the idea of coming down to the ground, it’s clear that the causes that interest individual players will become more and more a factor.

One of the intriguing aspects of the women’s game meteoric rise is the tendency of a growing number of fans to follow the player, rather than the team. So, it’s clear that we’re certainly heading towards – rather than away from – a sense of fandom as individually-driven, rather than team-based. How many existing fans of the men’s game know what individual players care about? There is an opportunity there, for sure.

Of course, there are many other factors to consider when addressing this lost generation of young people, but in these most divided of times, knowing that football clubs are on your side will be an increasingly powerful driver not just of digital, but also of physical support.

What do you think? The pandemic is proving to be a catalyst for more honestly re-engaging with supporters, so is this the time to address the 'missing generation' and, if so, how do we do it?