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So, football has become big business. Is that the
end of civilisation as we know it? No. From Manchester United through
to Mansfield, football clubs have to learn about the way businesses
behave if they are to build lasting success. In this contribution
to the debate I want to draw on the research and the experience
of ‘Tomorrow’s Company’, a business-led organisation which champions
an inclusive approach to business. I do so as a business observer
of the football scene, but also as a football fan who has loved
the game for over thirty years. Like many participants I am occasionally
saddened by the short-sightedness of boards, the excessive rewards
of those at the top, at the inadequate support for investment in
the future, by the folly of investors who see the whole thing as
a bundle of tradable assets rather than as a delicate organism fed
by loyalty and human values . . . and I am talking about business
here, not just football. The parallels between sporting and corporate success
are endlessly fascinating. Supporters of the top teams at the moment
worry about the loss of identity when foreign stars – or foreign
managers – jet in, pick up a season’s wages, and jet out again.1
There is interesting evidence from the research literature about
the qualities of the businesses that added the most shareholder
value over five decades in the USA. The most successful companies
were described as having ‘cult-like cultures’. You either fitted
in or you got out. (Look at Wimbledon – if you don’t want to have
your new shoes and suit set on fire after the first training session,
don’t go there.) And among the most successful companies, top executives
were rarely hired from outside: there seemed to be something irreplaceable
about ‘growing your own’. That was over the five decades ending
in the 1990s; interestingly, Hewlett Packard, one of the role model
companies, has just broken with this tradition to hire a woman as
its new CEO. The key test of her success, as with Arsène Wenger
or Gérard Houllier, will be in her ability to work with the grain
of the organisation’s tradition and values, to change what has to
be changed while knowing what you must never change. Perhaps the clearest message from business to football
is the one about uncertainty and change. Today, for the top clubs
it seems easy, with West Ham turning people away while charging
people £29 a head for tickets, whilst fans of Schalke 04 in Germany
pay top prices of around £4 a ticket.2 Do we really believe that
the admission-prices curve can continue indefinitely on its steep
upward rise? The history of business failure is full of people who
took for granted the continuing demand for their products. What
about pay-per-view? What if we elected a government that fell out
with the EU and foreign players were prevented from coming here?
What if there was a nasty recession or civil disturbance? What if
interest rates doubled just as football clubs were busy expanding
their stadiums, and they were left half-finished and half-empty
for two seasons? What if there is a new wave of amazing interactive
cybersport, which leaves football looking boring and staid to a
new generation of punters? We do not know what will change, but
something will change, and when the change comes, the lesson from
business is that the survivors will be those that were: l sensitive to the changing climate around them; l quick to learn and adapt; l insistent on preserving their unique character
and values; l prudent with their cash; l good at growing their own talent; l well regarded by their local authorities; l earning the loyalty of the next generation of
their fans. Why do these things matter to successful businesses?
It’s common sense. Relationships with customers, suppliers, communities
and employees are to a business what ears, nose, eyes and touch
are to an animal or person. They enable you to sense danger and
seize opportunity. Businesses which only think about pleasing today’s
shareholders destroy their ability to create wealth tomorrow. Relationships
depend on human qualities like loyalty and trust: when you are in
trouble you want to have a strong deposit account of goodwill to
call upon, not a group of people who have felt exploited for years.
You can’t trust people who have no values. Prudence with cash gives you freedom of action:
if you have gambled away all your reserves you are at the mercy
of whatever rich freak may choose to buy you out. It was home-grown
talent that rescued Manchester United after Munich. What we sow,
we reap: we just don’t know if it will take twenty minutes or twenty
years. An inclusive approach to the running of a football
club would start with understanding what makes it different. It
doesn’t need a PhD to realise the central importance of supporters.
If you map out the relationships that matter to, say, Tesco, you
would go through the employees, the customers, the suppliers, and
the community whose permission Tesco needs to operate. Only if Tesco
get all that right can they hope to create a return for their shareholders.
But what about football clubs? A few years ago, my family was on a half-term break
near Scarborough. My son I and decided to go and watch Scarborough
play a home game in the old Fourth Division against Swansea. It
was a wet night, and after ten minutes the home team scored. A few
feet away from us was a band of Welsh supporters who had just travelled
300 miles, and who had another 300 to travel home, and who had just
seen their side concede an awful goal. Yet they were singing, ‘We’re
so great, we’re ****ing incredible.’ That’s what I call loyalty. Football fans aren’t just customers. They are,
especially in the case of the smaller clubs who lack a Shanghai
branch of the supporters club, the local community. They are suppliers
of goodwill, energy and atmosphere. Without the atmosphere of the
Premier League, many foreign players say they would not be so keen
to come to the UK. And the fans have power: if they withdraw their
goodwill and support, few boards can hope to survive. The money
that comes from television rights and merchandising may be a welcome
extra, but it only grows out of the soil of goodwill that fans provide
and over generations may withdraw. If clubs get it wrong with their fans, they have
in one blow messed up three of their key relationships. So my agenda
for an inclusively run football club would include the appointment
by the board of a director responsible for supporter relations.
This would lead to all kinds of innovation. This would include consultation
over the fairest way to allocate tickets; how to have a public-address
system that actually addressed the public; co-operation with the
local community over parking; internet dialogues with the manager;
quarterly face-to-face public meetings where the board explains
to the fans what it is doing on youth development; a joint approach
to difficult issues like fans standing up in seated areas; improvements
to the quality of music, entertainment and food at the stadium.
Again and again in Tomorrow’s Company we talk to businesses who
find that if they cultivate the habit of listening, really listening,
and encouraging the flow of new ideas, they make savings. Recently
a construction company had massive problems bringing in skips to
remove waste from the shopping centre where its operators were working.
One day a manager from the building company was talking to the labourer
who swept up round a neighbouring supermarket. ‘We have our own
waste collected every day. Why do you do a separate collection?’
asked the labourer. It seems obvious to them now to collaborate
on waste collections: yet nobody had ever thought of it before. But dialogue with the supporters would not just
be about the housekeeping issues. A tomorrow’s football club would
get into dialogue on the big issues too. Ask the directors to state,
in the programme, and in the club’s annual report, what they are
there for. Few clubs, whether publicly quoted companies or mutuals,
would dare to say, ‘We’re here to rip you lot off and make lots
of money for us.’ Most would find it much easier to say, ‘We are
here to win the championship, entertain the fans, and build a better
club for the future.’ Great. Once you’ve got that in black and white
– or claret and blue – you can start holding them to it. Any time
there’s a decision you don’t like, challenge the club to justify
it against their own statement of purpose. In the same way, challenge the club to state what
its values are, what it cares about, what it will and won’t tolerate.
Get it to make a commitment to dialogue. Few clubs would dare to
say, in writing, ‘No we won’t talk to our fans.’ So even the reluctant
will be shamed into making some kind of commitment to dialogue.
Build on it. Conversation changes lives! Figure 1 below illustrates
this model. One of the benefits, for me, in attending the July
1999 conference at Birkbeck College on the regulation and governance
of football was to hear from speakers like Brian Lomax, who had
stepped in at a time of crisis for Northampton Town, and started
to build an inclusive football club. Mutual patterns of ownership
may be part of the answer. I am in favour of experimentation. But
there are, sadly, some mutual organisations which have lost touch
with their roots. Mutual behaviour, inclusive behaviour is more
important than mutual structure. Maybe non-mutuals should start
to promote supporter-shareholding schemes through Save As You Earn.
It may well be that the defection of the FA from the role of regulator
does leave a vacuum, which will need to be filled from above. Be
warned, however: regulators do not always achieve the desired result.
Compliance cultures are not always the natural breeding ground of
innovation and flexibility. Figures 2 below illustrates what I believe the
future agenda for action should be for all companies, football clubs
included. Personally, I believe that the next decade can and
should be the decade of dialogue in football. We may all then be
in time to ensure that come the next downturn in support there is
a robust group of inclusive football clubs which are truly built
to last. |
