Tom Cowgill asks if clubs are dropping the ball when it comes to young fans?

But while 70% of supporters polled agreed that football clubs did value their fans, more than half (56%) said they felt that professional football is not run with them in mind. So, what does this mean for fan engagement with younger fans? Support for a team is so often a matter of loyalty, so what can clubs do to ensure that fans feel truly rewarded for their loyalty to their club or sport?

And what about relevant offers and rewards helping with cost? While the ticket price of football can seem too much for young fans, offering additional opportunities through loyalty and reward schemes that resonate can bring that cost down, in relative value terms. And as much as responsibility could be said to reside with the clubs, it is a way that switched-on fans can help themselves, too.

It’s exactly the premise of our technology platform – it is free for both club and fan to take part and enables fans to use ‘points’ gained from their everyday spending against the price of tickets, to make attending their favourite sport more accessible. It’s like creating a currency for sport, which is really important considering that according to figures from the Premier League, young adult fans bought just 4% of all season tickets this year.

Today’s millennial fans are used to deeply personalised interactions. They want to feel special and prioritised, but they have to be able to afford it in the first place. Once they are engaged, they can then get to value a whole host of other things that we know are important – like unique experiences they can’t access elsewhere. Those clubs that engage on a deeper, more insightful level will gain the long-term loyalty of their fans – of all ages.

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