The role of the football spectator has been a hot topic in recent weeks. The most discussed issues have been the limits placed on the freedom of active fans in Melbourne and the right of the Novocastrians to have a say about the jersey for the Newcastle Jets.
The issues affecting those in the stands are often the most passionately debated of all topics as these conversations are the ones that involve the most passionate of supporters.
In any given country, there is a market for football spectators and clubs acknowledge that each group of the market will want something different from the football experience.
The person just getting involved in football will want something very different from the season ticket holder.
But who do the clubs need to target to ensure their long term survival?
In Kuper and Szymanski’s excellent book Why England Lose, the authors cast a critical eye over the make-up of the spectators at football games in Britain. They summarise that “on average, in the post-war era, half of all supporters in English football did not take up their seats again the next season.”
That includes the hardcore active fans.
They go on to suggest that the fact that 50 per cent of the hardest of hardcore fans (called Hornbyesque fans after author Nick Hornby who wrote the seminal Fever Pitch won’t come back season after season sits at odds with the idea that a true football fan is a one club man who goes to all his club’s home games.
Instead they offer up the idea that it is often the fair weather fan or the carefree casual who will, at any point in time, make up the majority of a crowd at a football game.
(For a more complete analysis of the author’s conclusions, read Chapter 11 of Why England Lose: and other curious football phenomena explained).
So what implications does this have for A-League clubs?
Admittedly these conclusions have to be taken with a grain of salt and may not be directly transferable to the Australia as the football markets in Britain and Australia are very different.
But if in the country where the legend of the Hornbyesque fan developed it can be shown to be not quite the concrete truth it has been made out to be, there is a lesson to be learned for Australian football administrators.
If the vast majority of football spectators are predicted to have a casual relationship with a club, this will impact upon a club’s overall strategy.
To paraphrase the conclusions of one of the studies used in ‘Why England Lose’, the loyalty of spectators cannot be relied upon.
If marketers look under the surface of supporter loyalty, they will find loyalty patterns quite similar to, say, supermarket goods sectors. Most fans are engaging in what is called “repertoire buying”, in that they purchase different brands at different times. In football terms, they shift from club to club over their lifetime.
Such behaviour may come as quite a shock to the active fan element of clubs, but as the global nature of football is enhanced further as a result of better and faster communication of scores and coverage of different leagues around the world, it will only be entrenched further.
Football fans will stop being monogamous and start becoming polygamists in terms of who they choose to follow.
Therefore, clubs cannot only focus on pleasing the hardcore fans in their crowds as this group is probably the minority of any crowd and with such high levels of churn from season to season, clubs will be left trying to please a substantially different group of individuals every few seasons.
Clubs need to attract armchair fans to stadiums, but they do not need to be converted to ‘diehard’ status. In fact, high levels of attrition in the individuals that make up a crowd are needed to attract new spectators to a club (although this is a problem more for clubs that regularly sell out their games).
Active fans provide atmosphere and may play an important role in attracting new people to attend games, but through their behaviour they can also turn away people from the game. And if a club has to focus resources that are grossly disproportionate to the percentage of the crowd this group makes up to ensure active fans don’t get out of hand then it is clearer to see why clubs may want to take action in this area.
It is understandable why Hornbyesque fans feel like they are the ones with the most to lose when they feel their way of watching football is threatened as they are the ones who have invested the most in terms of time, money and effort for their team.
However, this world view implies that there is a right way to watch football and a wrong way. Football is a product with many consumers and one group does not have the right to impose their views on others even if they believe they have a sense of entitlement.
All parties have to find a way to watch football together which includes the five year old seeing their first game right through to the pensioner who remembers watching a young Johnny Warren during his playing days.
As it is still early days in the A-League and the level of choice available to Australian fans who want to watch football in person is far less than places like Britain, it would be folly to predict that active fans won’t have a role in building up both existing A-League clubs and those clubs which are still to come.
However, active fans may think a little differently about their own behaviour if, as in Britain, one of the people on their left or right standing on their seat, scarf in the air, yelling at the top of their lungs professing their undying love for ‘their’ club this season wasn’t going to be there next season.
And what’s worse, they might be supporting another club.
whiskeymac
Guest
Oh c'mon. people stand at the NRL and Super 14 games i attended also - notably when someone is near the try or theres some contentious issue unfolding etc -and i have seen some huge flags and bannerswaved at AFL games. people dont sit at sporting venues to clap politely. they go to watch and be involved. the only issue i have wld be flares for obvious safety reasons, the rest is part of watching sport.
Rusty0256
Guest
Okay ‘The NSL’, let’s review the facts; when you talk about 'well supported' you can only be talking about a very small handful of clubs. South Melbourne Hellas (Greek), Melbourne Knights (Croatian), Sydney Olympic (Greek) and Sydney United (Croatian). Marconi Fairfield (Italian) was only strong because of its club facilities (pokies) rather than its supporter base. Apart from Grand Finals though, regular attendances in the last years were between 3 and 10,000 at best and the highs were mostly when there was a local derby between 2 of them. Oh there was also 2 more big clubs, both in fan-base and success-rate in the last years of the NSL, Perth Glory and Adelaide United, Adelaide City having already given up and withdrawn to the State League 2 years before. So really we are talking about 4 mono-ethnic teams (as I am sure you don't count either Glory or AU as 'genuine' NSL teams), 2 Greek and 2 Croatian. Each of these ethnic teams had a genuine core of supporters, I agree. But it was a shrinking core. I sat in the stands at Bob Jane Stadium on many occasions and Somers St on 2 or 3 occasions. Almost always I was amongst mostly elderly men. Down behind the goals were maybe a thousand mostly young active supporters. So you had young male active supporters and old male passive supporters. There were virtually NO women and no families. The main problem for these clubs was a total lack of growth potential. The only 'new' supporters were young male teens, keen to take on their ethnic heritage, brandishing their parent's homeland colours, being proud Croatian, Greek or Italians for 90 minutes every week. The rest of the crowd (if you can call 3-4,000 a crowd) was largely old former immigrant males, staying connected in their last years with their home-countries heritage. Women were either not welcome or not interested. Families were nowhere to be seen and probably did not attend due to the aforementioned lack of interest of wives and girlfriends, especially when their views were further tainted by regular media-storms over the latest 'Soccer-Riots' and in those days, the stories were often much closer to the truth. The hard facts were that for each of these mono-ethnic clubs, their demographic was rapidly shrinking. Too many of the active-support kids would grow up, have families and move on to other things in life, maybe catching a game just now and then. The old supporters, well they just kept going to God. And as each new generation arrived, it was one generation further removed from their family’s ethnic roots and less of a reason to connect. Cross cultural marriages created further dilution. There were several half-hearted attempts to broaden these NSL club fan-bases but this was mostly directed from above (the ASF). Realistically there was no real interest or commitment from within the clubs to change who they culturally were, until the 'Sword of Damocles', in the shape of the impending A-League, was literally hanging over their heads. By then it was too late. The irony is that at the end, the only NSL clubs that had anything like the 15,000 supporters you talk about, were the A-League embryos, Adelaide United and Perth Glory.
Axelv
Guest
Apparently Con, If you're under 50, that makes you a teenager these days :)
con
Guest
wait i just re-read that. when i said the chanting was funny, i mean the stupid chants like oo ahh serbia were funny because they were so pointless. taunting an ethnicity about a very serious conflict is not. just had to clarify what i meant as it came out wrong.
con
Guest
the NSL: im going to back your argument slightly here. my backgrounds russian hence i have no ethnic affiliation to the old nsl. i used to goto south melb games with my teammates (played for a greek team) and i can definately relate to what your saying. so many of these people were basicly lost from football and have not returned. i love vpl games and i see the same old faces i did in my teen years, when i ask them if their mvfc, they say they cant stand it. i agree with bringing in south melb or melb knights as they already have an existing community fan base. the passion is already there. i also think that the ethnic violence was GROSSLY exagerrated and yes i mean GROSSLY. over the 30 or so games i went to i only saw a fight ONCE and it happened outside the grounds at a hellas vs knights game. the downside is that violence can flare up. i remember the greeks singing chants giving it to the croats about the balkan conflict, yes the chants are funny but we must remove this from football if were to progress as a sport. mainstream australia looks down on it whether we like it or not and simply need to remove this element. another point i need to make is when victory versed south melbourne for a pre-season friendly. there was a report damning our sport because a massive fight broke out. again, either im blind but i didnt see anything of the sort occur and i stayed for the entire game. I WANT NSL TEAMS BACK IN, but judging by history, bloodthirsty news ltd workers will be present at these games en masse waiting for someone to throw a beer container ready to label it an all out war.
con
Guest
were not teenagers, can you get that out of your system already. most of the teenagers, still at school, cant afford memberships to be an active fan (brilliant strategy by ffa to drive fans away)
con
Guest
well let me explain it for you my friend. im 24, all my mates around about my age enjoy active support more and if they would goto an a-league game they would want to be with the active ends. right now only 2 of my mates go and they are massive fans, the rest are semi-interested but used to come back in seasons 1 and 2 and absolutely loved it. these people dropped off because i cant bring them with me. now onto family friends, i know 3 kids all under the age of 18 that used to attend mvfc games back in seasons 1 and 2. they also cant go now because they cant afford memberships. for younger fans, they prefer going for the atmosphere; when your sitting on level 3 at etihad your bored out of your brain and you dont come back. if you cant get into the active areas to even sample what its like, why on earth would you buy membership. as for my parents etc etc, they cant get tickets to victory games at etihad because the attendance is bizarelly capped at 20k (non active areas, i dont expect to see my mum jumping for melbourne victory ole any time soon)
nordster
Guest
and what about us (aussie born) scandinavian-russian-austrian-anglos ? :P point being the single ethnicity clubs were a dead end as we're all ending up mixed race anyways...
Fussball ist unser leben
Roar Guru
To be honest, I don't know "where you are going with that". I want to know which NSL club people, who were not of Greek, Italian, Croatian, etc. background, could follow? Which of the old NSL clubs would embrace the Somalian-Australians in 2011? Or, the Vietnamese-Australians? The Danish-Australians? The Indigenous Australians? The Anglo-Australians? Can you see where I'm going with this? Would each ethnic group have to form its own football club or could we all follow one of the ex-NSL clubs like we all support MVFC?
The NSL
Guest
so what. Most of those clubs had 5000-15000 loyal supporters week in and week out who no longer watch the game are you listening, why as you say would a serbian group of people want to support a croatian (melb knights) founded team anyway, who cares who establishes these clubs, people are smart enough to support whoever they want to support, if you dont like sth melb dont support them, dont like melb knights dont support them, you see where im going with this dont you
Fussball ist unser leben
Roar Guru
The NSL I'm eager to understand more about the old NSL, so can you kindly give us your insights into how accepting and tolerant were the NSL clubs towards "outsiders". Let's say, it's the early-1990s and it's getting dangerous for my family in Yugoslavia so I migrate to Melbourne and live in St Albans ... although, some might speculate this is like jumping from the frying pan into the fire ;-). I love football and my Serbian family and Serbian friends want to get involved with an NSL football team. Would the local team, at Somers Street warmly embrace and accept us as part of the membership ... or would we feel like outcasts and ostracised? How about if I were a Turk, living in Port Melbourne, and wanted to join Sth Melbourne? Was "the ethnic homogeneity" at the NSL clubs (Knights=Croats, Sth Mel=Greek; Preston=Macedonian; Brunswick=Italians, Green Gully=Maltese) a myth; or reality?
Axelv
Guest
Those several sports include football, whether you like it or not.
The NSL
Guest
The nsl was relatively well supported by the likes of melb knights, sth melb, syd utd, syd oly, marconi, adel city. It was the likes of parra power, nthn spirit, canberra cosmos, gippsland, carlton, collingwood bris strikers etc that failed to consistently failed to attract supporters so what does frank lowy and his cronies do? he kicks out the 'ethnic' clubs , now the supporters of those clubs dont even follow football in this country and prefer to follow an afl or nrl team, well done ffa
Axelv
Guest
There are dedicated active area sections in both AAMI Park and Etihad Stadium, the people in other area's always sit down. I'm not sure if you realise what you're talking about. I have trouble standing myself due to a disability, On the first Derby I had to stand but I didn't complain as I chose to sit in the MV section, the atmosphere was amazing and I joined into the songs that I knew, although I couldn't walk for a few days after it. Look at this seating map please. http://premier.ticketek.com.au/dbimages/sfx60587.gif , The pink shows the active area's. And by your definition of hoon, 99.5% of active supporters are NOT hoons. Non hoons are being ejected. And that is the issue. I'll highlight the problem again, the issue is that security don't understand football culture and they perceive active fans as a threat due to their standing, jumping around and singing. When in fact they are just supporting their team, people who are not use to football can sometimes misinterpret this behaviour and don't know how to react. Unjustifiably bullying fans is not acceptable and is an abuse of human rights.
Koops
Guest
Exactly Zach, i like standing at WAFL games and have a beer with the boys, but if i want to sit down in the stands, i really dont want people standing up in front of me.
Fussball ist unser leben
Roar Guru
Most modern stadia are all-seating.
zach
Guest
Why not allow standing in standing room areas and use the seats for sitting on. Just a thought.
Fussball ist unser leben
Roar Guru
I reckon all GA sections of the stadia should be "sitting down during the game is optional". Fair dinkum, if people don't want to stand and watch football, they should stay home and sit on their couch with a remote.
zach
Guest
Question: If you decide to watch the game standing up, how does that affect the people in the seats behind you? Answer: They can't see the game (unless they and everyone else behind them stand up too, which kind of defeats the purpose of buying a seat). Likewise it affects other people at the game if you decide to leap about, sing incessantly at the top of your voice and light flares. So to answer your question, a hoon is anyone who does these things with complete disregard for other spectators and the police, and then justifies their actions by saying they are providing "atmosphere".
Titus
Guest
I don't have a problem using the term soccer to avoid confusion, but officially the game is Association Football, so in the football tab I don't see how there would be confusion.