Proper Fans

What is a ‘proper’ football fan? There’s no true definition, and the meaning that I attribute to the expression has changed over the years.

At one time I would have said that to be a proper fan, someone had to go to as many games as possible. Few reasons could legitimately excuse the devoted fan from missing a home game – births, deaths, and marriages might be acceptable reasons, but few others – and they should see as many away games as humanly possible.

The Anfield Kop, some time in the 1960s

It isn’t necessary to buy memorabilia and match programmes to be a proper fan (in fact, sometimes it’s the fan of the more fair-weather variety that indulges in mass buying of replica kits and the like), but the real supporter should emotionally invest themselves completely in their team. Not for them the shrug of the shoulders after a defeat. Losses must be accompanied by an all-encompassing depression; victories must be celebrated euphorically.

The days when such people were in the majority on the terraces at football grounds up and down the country are gone. They exist in smaller numbers – especially outside the top levels of the game – but for most, their relationship with the game has changed.

How today's football fans are seen, especially by advertisers 

Before 1992, when the Premier League came into being and Sky changed the face of football broadcasting forever, most football supporters would see their team play only rarely if they relied on watching them on TV, hence the belief I held then that a proper fan was one who went to the majority of their team’s matches.

Clive Allen (left), and Richard Keys, debuting on Sky's Premier League coverage in 1992

When BBC’s Match of The Day and ITV’s regional football shows broadcast highlights of just a few games each week, even fans of clubs like Arsenal, Manchester United, and Liverpool might see their teams briefly a couple of times a month. Live football broadcasts were confined to the FA Cup Final and an international or two; it was difficult to be an armchair supporter.

At the same time, going to games rarely involved getting a ticket in advance. By and large, it was turn up on a Saturday afternoon, pay cash at the turnstile, and watch the game.

And games universally kicked off at the same time, on the same day, each week: 3pm on Saturdays, 7.30pm in midweek. While it’s true that fans were not really nurtured by clubs, they weren’t disrespected either. With little income other than match day revenue – no big broadcasting deals pre-Sky, no shirt sponsorship before the mid-1970s – clubs really needed the fans through the gates in numbers.

Coronavirus restrictions requiring games to be played behind closed doors has demonstrated that from the perspective of the atmosphere at games, fans are much missed; but financially, do clubs need them?

Liverpool in action behind closed doors at Anfield

A BBC study showed that during the 2016-17 season, half of the clubs in the Premier League would have turned a profit without any fans at their games. In 2017-18, Manchester City's revenue grew to £500.5 million. Of that, £56.7 million was generated by matchday income, £232.3 million was commercial income, and £211.5 million came from broadcasters.

So, are supporters in stadiums becoming less important? Manchester City have recently announced that 1,100 seats are being removed at The Etihad to make way for more advertising boards, a decision that speaks volumes on that score.

The degree to which Premier League clubs value their supporters may be gauged by their reaction to fans being allowed back into stadiums as the season draws to a close. Burnley were not charging fans for their game against Liverpool, but at the other end of the spectrum, Spurs fans had to stump up £60 to watch their team play Aston Villa.

Fans in grounds have seemingly become less and less important since 1992. Match days and kick-off times changed to accommodate TV viewers rather than fans who actually go to games. There have been plenty of complaints over the years from travelling fans who either have to leave home in the middle of the night for a lunchtime kick-off, or find that getting home is nigh on impossible after a long-distance evening game. Now that the Premier League has the taste for even more eccentric scheduling to accommodate TV coverage of behind closed doors games, will we ever see a return to the more orthodox football calendar? I wouldn’t bet on it.

When a European Super League was proposed in April, Uefa must have been delighted on two fronts. Firstly, it detracted from their almost simultaneous announcement of changes to the Champions League format, changes which many were opposed to, but which got lost in the furore about the Super League. Secondly, it allowed Uefa – along with the broadcasters - to occupy the moral high ground over the rights of fans, ground they have subsequently lost with a couple of asinine moves.

With Istanbul ruled out as the venue of the Champions League final because of coronavirus for the second season running, the logical venue for a match between two English clubs – Chelsea and Manchester City – would have been a ground in England. But, no, the game has been moved to Portugal, and although coronavirus limits the attendance to 20,000 (just under 50% of the stadium’s capacity), up to 12,000 fans of the finalists will travel from England to Portugal. Surely this is unwise under the circumstances, even if Portugal is currently a ‘green list’ country.

On top of that, Uefa have reduced the capacity at many stadiums hosting games in Euro2020, thus limiting the ability of real fans - who are losing their seats in ballots -  to attend those games, while continuing to sell hideously expensive hospitality packages to their corporate customers.

In England, the broadcasters’ solidarity with fans evaporated even more quickly, with the announcement that teams that play in Champions League matches scheduled for Wednesday evenings will have their weekend Premier League matches moved to 7.45pm on Saturday nights.

The ill-fated Super League announcement introduced a new expression - legacy fans. These are traditional supporters, the locals who turn up week in, week out, through thick and thin, putting their hard-earned cash into buying tickets and merchandise, and their heart and soul into supporting their teams. These fans are not now regarded by some clubs behind the Super League concept as their core fanbase.

The fans that these clubs are more interested in don’t go to the games – they are not necessarily located in the same country as the team they support – but they support the club by consuming the product through electronic devices and that doesn’t even necessarily mean watching full-length games, but highlights, clips, and other material on their phones and tablets.

No wonder that Real Madrid president Florentino Perez has insisted that football has to "change and adapt" claiming that that 40 per cent of young people between the ages of 16 to 24 are not interested in football, and that one reason is that 90-minute matches are "too long."

Real Madrid president Florentino Perez

Although the European Super League idea is now off the table, the reprieve is only temporary. The term ‘legacy fan’ is unflattering and insulting, and the disdain shown for the fans who have been the lifeblood and backbone of football clubs for decades is appalling. But, sooner or later the traditional football supporter will find themselves confronted with even more inconvenient kick-off times, for games in even more inconvenient locations – that 39^th game idea the Premier League had a few years back will inevitably resurface one day – with tickets more expensive and harder to come by.

The idea that “Football without the fans is nothing” rings pretty hollow these days.

Smart Meter? No Thanks!

Every night, before going to bed, my mother would patrol the house checking that every electrical appliance – apart from the fridge – was switched off, and preferably unplugged from the wall socket too. This applied especially to the television. Whether this was supposed to save electricity or whether it was for safety’s sake, I don’t know.

When I was a child and we went on holiday, every domestic appliance – including the fridge, which would have been defrosted in anticipation – was unplugged. I have a sneaking suspicion that the electricity was turned off at the mains as well.

Mum making sure that everything was turned off reminded me of James Thurber, the American cartoonist and writer, who described an elderly relative as having a great suspicion of electricity, which she believed was dripping invisibly all over the house, and leaking from empty sockets if the switch had been left on.

If there’s a reason for unplugging your television – either when you go to bed, or during the day – then a thunderstorm is it. It is not unheard of for televisions to be affected by lightning strikes, and I did once experience a fried video recorder after a thunderstorm. I have been known to unplug the TV during a thunderstorm, but wandering around the house, unplugging appliances just before bedtime is not an activity I indulge in at present.

In the days when my mum was dutifully defrosting the fridge prior to our annual holiday, our electricity was supplied by the London Electricity Board (LEB), which came into being in 1948 as a result of the nationalisation of the electricity industry. All of the UK’s electricity was then supplied by one of the fifteen regional electricity boards, but under the flurry of privatisations pushed through by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government, the LEB disappeared in 1990, replaced by London Electricity plc.

The nationalised, regional, electricity boards circa 1948

There are now around sixty companies from whom one can buy one’s electricity, led by the Big Six:

 

These companies offer consumers a bewildering array of different tariffs, a far cry from the days of my mother’s television unplugging and fridge defrosting, when there was one supplier, and no opportunity to shop around for the best price.

Once upon a time, the quarterly electricity bill could be a shock (pun intended), arriving as it invariably did, between pay days and for an un-budgeted for amount. Those bills were based on meter readings performed by a representative of the electricity board who would root around with a torch in the cupboard under the stairs (where the meter was usually located), once a quarter. Or if there was no one in the house when the meter reader called (which was more often than not), then the reading would be estimated and the bill might not bear any relation to the amount of power used, resulting in the consumer overpaying or underpaying on that particular bill.

Today, my electricity meter is in a box outside my front door; if a meter reader wanted to call to read it, they could do so without me even being aware. Meter readers still call on householders – unsurprisingly, UNISON (the union that represents many of the nation’s meter readers), asked for this to stop as a result of the coronavirus pandemic – but for the majority of us, smart meters, or providing our own readings, mean that visits from the meter reader, and estimated bills, are a thing of the past.

No more estimated bills is a selling point that my energy supplier has been using to try and get me to convert to a smart meter lately.  

“A smart meter means no more estimated bills,” said the lady from the electricity company. “I give my meter readings online as soon as I’m asked,” I replied, “I don’t get estimated bills.” And besides, since I pay monthly by direct debit, I don’t get bills, I get statements, which is not the same thing at all.

The lady from the electricity company then said that all old meters were being replaced for ‘health and safety reasons,’ to which I replied in alarmed tones, “What! You mean my meter is dangerous?” -  I got no response to that. Our current meter was only installed in 2015, so clearly not old enough to represent any sort of safety hazard.

My objection to having a smart meter is based on the premise that there’s nothing wrong with the current system. The idea that a smart meter will make my energy costs more manageable is quite frankly, tosh.

The notion that I can control my electricity costs by referring to the in-home display that is linked to the meter falls down for two reasons. Firstly, smart meters cannot (so far as I can see) allow me to drill down to individual appliances or wall sockets to see how much they are consuming at any given time, and even if they did, daily costs are so small that changes resulting from switching something off (or on) would be unmeasurable. I say that on the basis that in the twelve months from May 2020 to April 2021, we used 3,770 kWh of electricity, which works out at about £1.44 per day, or 6p per hour. At that rate, if I turned off everything bar the fridge, I think a difference in usage might be observable in an hour or two; frankly, what’s the point?

An advertised benefit of smart meters is that they save time as customers no longer have to submit meter readings. That will save me about 40 minutes a year, but I’ll spend much longer checking my in-home display for minuscule changes in expense, and even longer trying to work out which device I should switch off to save me a penny or two. Even the government's own estimates suggest that smart meter savings will amount to no more than £11 per year - that's just 3p per day!

The advertised costs of using certain household devices mean changes
 in use would be almost undetectable under normal conditions.

Although the government has set a target of a smart meter in every domestic property by the end of 2025 (revised from by 2020 for obvious reasons), having one installed is not yet compulsory. Eventually, I suppose I will succumb to having a smart meter because apparently, without a smart meter, I may be denied access to certain tariffs. Why this should be, I do not know, and in fact, I fail to understand exactly why there are so many different tariffs for the same, homogenous, product anyway. After all, whether I pay 15p per kWh as I do now, or £15, the electricity is the same; it’s not like petrol, more expensive power doesn’t mean better quality, doesn’t mean better performance.

With the cost of the programme to install smart meters in the UK around £11billion (which we, the consumers are paying), and given that there are about 14 million domestic electricity accounts in the UK, we are all going to have to save nearly £800 to pay off installation costs before we save any money on the power we consume. 

To save that sort of money I’ll have to become like my dear old mum, prowling around the house each night, turning everything off – oh, and unplugging the telly!