Beginner's Guide to Being a Fan Rep

A few observations and pointers for those thinking of stepping up. Warning, you may find your head encountering the image below frequently

The new football season draws ever closer and with it the challenges for the volunteers who put time and effort into representing fans through Trusts, Independent Supporters’ Associations and other fan groups. That’s not to say the challenges have ever stopped, with the last 18 months requiring fan reps to develop their knowledge of medical science and ethics, public health policy, and the finer detail of governance structures and financial compliance. It’s a long way from just trying to ensure fans’ voices are heard and arguing ticket prices are a tad high. 

Here are a few observations that might help anyone volunteering to help out as part of their Club’s supporter group – and which will also no doubt give some keyboard warrior the chance to say “No one made you do it”. 

Do the detail

When you deal with your club you’re going to be meeting with professionals, who know their field, and who work for people that don’t particularly care for having to explain themselves. So you need to do your homework and go into meetings armed with facts and a decent understanding of the bigger picture. 

Ticketing, for example, is a highly complex area, and one which most fans – understandably – see solely through the prism of their own individual experience. If you are going to do any work on ticketing, you need to understand this, and work hard to develop a relationship with your club’s ticketing professionals. Once you show you are serious, you’ll often find they are prepared to work with you. You can provide valuable feedback on how policies will work on the ground and how particular initiatives will be received. You can also help test how communications around ticketing will work.

You may even be able to help develop some policies – for instance arguing for young adult categories to bridge the gap between junior and adult pricing, or expanding the availability of concessionary pricing. It is important to remember, though, that the ticketing professionals don’t usually get to make the decisions. The Board does. 

But you’ll achieve nothing if you don’t make it your business to understand a complex area that is quite literally the gateway issue for many fans. 

You don’t represent anyone

It’s an unfortunate fact of being in any representative organisation that you spend a lot of time hearing why you don’t represent anyone. Or, to be more precise, you don’t represent the precise views of the individual that is shouting at you at the particular moment they are shouting at you. 

However many numbers you can muster, through a physical demo, a survey or poll, or indeed any activity whatsoever, to show who agrees with you, there are still more people who disagree with you. They are in that silent majority we always hear so much about – quite an impressive feat for a group who loudly and frequently tell us they are silent. 

You represent your members first and foremost. And in contrast to most football club boards, those who lead supporters’ organisations are accountable to those members for what they do. That means it’s not possible to solely push your own personal agenda – although you will be told you are by people pushing agendas.

But you also need to be aware of the wider mood – something that should be possible for anyone embedded in their club’s culture to do. If you are, you will bring people with you. But unfortunately you will hear more from the people who don’t agree with you than those who do. Remember that “you’re unrepresentative” often translates as “you don’t agree with everything I say” or “you’re not doing exactly what I want, when I want”.

Get social media in context

Social media channels are essential for spreading your message and raising your profile. Unfortunately they are also bubbles, echo chambers and, increasingly, playgrounds for the unpleasant, the bigoted, the vexatious and the agenda-peddling grifters.

Unfortunately, you’re going to have to steel yourself for some abuse – a statement that by no means excuses the kind of online crap that’s all too common, but which recognises a sad reality. A regular tactic is for people to deliver such sustained, vile abuse, slander and lies that you are tempted to block them. This then gives them the chance to seek further attention by accusing you of blocking them. Mute is your friend. 

You’ll probably also find that a transmit only policy takes up less of your time, clutters up the inboxes of your followers less and in the process strengthens your message, and eventually means the attention-seekers will seek attention elsewhere. 

Take control of your comms channels, don’t let your comms channels control you. Also, understand that people can lie and abuse with impunity on social media because the channels not only don’t care, they know it’s good for their business.

Be measured, be clear

It can be really hard going from opposition to sitting in a room for a conversation with the people you oppose. But this eventually has to be done. It’s what you are there for. You will be criticised by people that don’t have the courage to do this, or by those who think it’s better to stand outside the room shouting than to be inside talking.

But you also need to remember why you are inside the room, and constantly assess what you are getting out of it. The time may come when a strategic withdrawal is necessary to force a reset, for example. Don’t mistake the process for the end result. 

Also – don’t confuse measured pragmatism with not taking a stance. You don’t need “a position” on everything, but you do need a clear stance on the key issues. There’s no point saying some fans think one thing and some another. You are there to take decisions, and you are accountable for them. You’re never going to please everyone, so don’t try.

Time works differently

Time, as fans of Dr Who will tell you, is an elastic concept. And it is very important for fan reps to understand how it works in this sphere. If you are not doing the precise thing that someone on social media wants you do to at the precise moment they write their message, you are not doing it all. You are the tree falling in a forest when no one hears.

If something you do is not seen immediately by the person who subsequently criticises you for not doing the thing they wanted you to do at the precise moment they thought of it, then you haven’t done it. If you haven’t said something at the precise moment someone wants you to say it, you have stayed silent. If you didn’t anticipate something was going to happen before it happened, you are useless. And it is never, ever, possible to be doing more than one thing at a time. Apparently.

You will achieve nothing

If you remember this, you won’t go far wrong. The things you campaign for are ridiculous and unachievable. Until they happen, at which point they would have happened anyway and you had nothing to do with it. And in the unlikely event you do achieve something – such as a reduction in ticket prices – it won’t be enough. You should have negotiated a backdated reduction. 

You are totally unimportant and ineffectual, so much so that some people are prepared to spend extraordinary amounts of time pointing this out. 

And don’t complain about this. That would mean you are looking for thanks. And no one asked you to do this anyway. 

It’s still worth it

Despite all the above, I’d still encourage as many fans as possible to get involved in their supporters’ group, just for a while. It doesn’t have to be a lifelong commitment, and in fact a little more turnover mixed in with experience would do the movement a lot of good. A lot has been achieved, more – depending on the outcome of the fan-led review – could be. And at least, unlike the keyboard warriors, armchair experts and grifters, you will have tried to make a difference.

Photo by Behnam Norouzi on Unsplash