Business Advantages of Supporter Community ... - Supporters Direct

to generate comparative information about supporter community owned
clubs and clubs of equivalent size and status that are privately owned.
The survey method was:
l An open online survey
l Publicised via official club websites, fan forums and programmes
l Based on ‘pairs’ of clubs, which corresponded to the best possible degree
in terms of the following factors:
– League status
– Location (e.g. one club town or two/multi-club city)
– Size of attendances
Supporter Trust Majority Owned Non Supporter Owned
or Major Shareholder Clubs
Brentford (FL1)
Exeter (FL1)
Lincoln City (FL2)
AFC Wimbledon (BSP)
AFC Telford United (BSN)
FC United of Manchester (NPL)
Colchester (FL1)
Torquay United (FL2)
Luton Town (BSP)
Boston (BSN)
Clubs Surveyed for Supporter Satisfaction Survey
Halifax Town (NPL)
In the survey we asked supporters to rate their satisfaction against a range
of areas of club operation using the following ratings: Very unsatisfied;
Unsatisfied; Neither unsatisfied nor satisfied; Satisfied; Very satisfied.
The categories of business operations surveyed were: Off-pitch satisfaction;
On-pitch satisfaction; Owners; Club Services; Membership Scheme;
Merchandise; Supporter Consultation; Team Management; Trust.
In total over 1700 supporters responded to the survey. However, there were
significant variations in terms of responses, ranging from just 25 (Torquay)
and 45 (Boston) at the lower end, to 398 (FC United) and 380 (AFC
Wimbledon) at the upper end. Given the open ‘self selected’ nature of the
survey as well as the variance in response rate, we must provide a caveat to
the findings: namely that they cannot be taken as statistically representative
of fans of all clubs, especially those with lower response rates. However, on
the whole we have provided averages between supporter community owned
and other clubs to offset differences in response rate of individual clubs.
8 Supporters Direct Briefing Paper No.4