Fan Centricity: What brands can learn from top-flight football clubs

The ability of a brand to understand clients’ situations, perceptions, and expectations, is known as client-centricity, or consumer-centricity. For us at DVJ Insights, client-centricity plays a pivotal role. We create the best possible experience for the client and ensure that the client is at the centre of our business’s philosophy, operations, and ideas, and by doing so we aim to become the best research agency on the market. The shift towards client-centricity seems inevitable for most brands. But what can brands exactly do to convert customers into lifelong fans? To find out, we took a short detour into football where ‘fan centricity’ is of vital importance.

understanding fan centricity

DVJ Insights wanted to explore what ‘fan centricity’ meant to football fans across the top-flight divisions in England, the Netherlands, Spain, and Germany (interviewing nearly 3,000 fans with all samples supplied by our partner Pure Spectrum). At the outset, we had three main objectives:

1. Understand the concept of fan centricity and what that really means to people.
2. Identify which clubs were getting it right or wrong and why.
3. Uncover if there are broader lessons for brands in other industry sectors about the equivalent theme of consumer centricity.

We were fully aware that the dynamics of following a football team are quite unique, defined by unconditional and often unflinching loyalty and highly emotional rollercoaster journeys. It also was important for us to try and isolate and exclude (within reason), the issues of on-field success and try and focus the conversation on other areas of the club and game. We also knew that the game was changing rapidly with financial dependency on regular match goers becoming less, the huge growth in exposure for the game globally but also increasing pressure for clubs in England, following the recent fan led review, around governance and fan engagement.

defining key metrics

So, to focus on fan centricity, we settled the core on fans’ views on 8 key metrics. Namely, perceptions of the owners and their communication with fans, value for money of tickets, merchandise and matchday food and drink as well as broader issues around the commitment to women’s football, investment in grassroots football and working in the local community. These were the quantifiable measures. But we wanted to dig deeper and so we also used our Mass Qual techniques to allow fans to tell us some of their stories and associations with their clubs. Here, the deeper emotional connections start to surface.

“Fan engagement goes way beyond just matchday experience.”

Premier League Fan Table

For this piece, we will focus on the English Premier League, and it was pretty revealing. There were clubs where fans were really closely connected and the feeling that their club was doing a great job (amongst them were Manchester City, Leicester City, and Crystal Palace). Towards the bottom places in the fan centricity ‘league’ were the likes of West Ham (despite on-field performance being very good), Newcastle (pre-takeover) and Southampton (who have subsequently seen a change in ownership).

Man City’s masterclass

Let’s focus on Manchester City, and with good reason, because they Top the Fan Centricity Premier League table. What really stood out what the ‘holistic’ approach Man City have taken to fan engagement – they featured in the Top 2 Premier League positions in 6 out of the 8 metrics and did very well in the other 2. Really significantly, in areas that are about deep connection, (like communication with the fans, investing in the local community and in grassroots football), City scores consistently highly. Our takeaway is that the strategy of fan engagement has been well thought through, going way beyond just matchday experience – a true sense of a club that has looked out listened to its fan base, and acted right across the board. It’s an exemplary case that is relevant to the football industry and brands in general. Blue Moon – City have not left their fans standing alone!

Figure 1 Manchester City and Leicester City evaluated on the 8 metrics

Leicester’s loyalty & Newcastle’s trust

Leicester City, too, has built a real sense of loyalty amongst its fanbase, particularly in its local community. Fans trust the owners; they see tangible improvements and initiatives around them, and it undoubtedly gives an even stronger sense of connection.

Newcastle United, by contrast, pre-takeover had a real trust deficit and a clear opportunity for new owners to rebuild that gap, not least a key and basic area of communication with the fans from the owners. Noticeably, that has been a primary focus in the first few months and it’s clear already that the rebuild of trust has re-energised its fanbase.

“People are people: fans see themselves as fans and not as customers.”

What brands can learn from fans

On the broader issue of what brands might, in general, learn from fan centricity, we think there are some obvious recommendations.

1. People and context truly matter: As Depeche Mode would have it, ‘People are People.’ Fans see themselves as fans and not as customers, in the same way, that those who buy brands are people, as opposed to merely consumers. It’s a vital perspective, to understand where your product or service fits into people’s lives. It’s rarely purely transactional, choice is abundant so you need to understand the context of what you offer and how that is relevant – it requires deeper human understanding.
2. Think about the whole and don’t compromise: A rounded holistic approach to what your brand stands for and how you deliver is key. It needs to connect the dots from its product or service performance right through to its wider contribution to society. A brand that can do this in a consistent trustworthy manner will succeed.
3. Emotions do matter: They clearly do in football, but they do also for many products and services and all aspects of brand communications. Digging deep to find out why brands matter and what role they play is crucial. From an insight perspective, that means ‘digging for the ‘why?’.
4. Don’t take loyalty for granted: Our starting place for the fan centricity work was the speedy U-turn clubs made to their European Super League announcement. Evidentially, the clubs had not done their due diligence and didn’t really understand their fans. The fan pushback was fast and clear.
5. Know who you are and who you are not: It seems obvious but as a club or brand, know what you are and equally what you are not. For example, Leicester City knows they are a great ‘challenger’ brand. By their actions, they have created an incredibly strong local connection, they can ‘trade on’ being an underdog that continuously punches above their weight. Fans understand and told us that, love that strong connection and what it means for the club and fans together.
6. Leadership and communications really matter: Whatever the club or brand, it’s important to communicate in a transparent, regular, and open manner. It’s a prerequisite for building trust in the club or brand.