Youth Justice

I’ve just started reading a book, and typically in a busmans holiday sort of way, it’s a football book – “The Beautiful Game? Searching for the soul of Football”, by ‘Independent’ journalist David Conn. A very apt title considering the souless money driven aspirations of Premiership teams, with Chelsea being a much criticised example of course. One of the points that struck me in the first chapter no less, is the imutable fact that the average age of football fans attending premiership games is 35 – 45 year old males. Now,  whilst I have a background in marketing, I’m not entirely sure whether this is a good demographic for the growth of a football club. Certainly, men in this age group tend to have enough money to buy their season ticket year in year out, and enough spare to cough up on merchandise in the Mega Store.  But where are the next generation of diehards? On the doorstep of the club, in an armchair or in countries thousands of miles away? There is no surprise why men of this age flock to Bridge. If you were born in 1965, you were 5 when Chelsea won the FA Cup for the first time. Around this time, your old man may well have taken you along to the Bridge. Once you get that sensation of danger, the pull of the crowd, the irrisistable smell of fried onions and horseshit and the cacaphonous roar of the crowd when your team scores – that’s it, you’re hooked.  When you get to your teens, you start going on your own and the real adventure begins. You start to develop a group or dare I say a gang of like minded friends, who you go with every week home and away replete with ribald adventures following the club you love. The bottom line, and the proof if the attendance demographic is anything to go by, is that if the clubs get them while they are young, they’ve got them for life.  If that is the case, why oh why do Chelsea and other ‘big’ clubs do so little to cultivate their future and potentially most loyal fan base. Ok, so most clubs have family enclosures where Mum, Dad and the kids can all watch the game in relative sterility, but it’s when the kids leave the nest that they need the most nurturing and when the addiction can most effectively be exploited. Their graduation to becoming an all singing and dancing (and most probably drinking) fan for life. Just before the end of last season, a very thought provoking article appeared in Chelsea’s legendary fanzine ‘CFCUK’. Tom Allen had set up the Chelsea Youth Group representing 13-24 year olds. He and the group had embarked in serious dialogue with the club to help what is, in my opinion, a key group of fans vital to the future of the club. What they wanted was simple:To go to Chelsea games regularly, for a price they can afford for the privilege of sitting with their mates and singing their hearts out passionately for the blue cause. Let’s face it how many 17 year olds can afford the season ticket price hike from £350 to £700? What did they get? Rebuffed. This is really short sighted for a club that purports to be one of the richest in the world. These kids exude a passion which most of us would be proud of or simply do not have the energy to impart anymore. Put simply, they and their children (10 or so years down the line) are the future of the club – the future and the present for that matter that will keep the songs, the passionate and vocal support that the Broadcasters crave when bunging vast amounts of money at the clubs which helps to finance them in the first place. When I knew about stuff like marketing, I was under the impression that you always concentrate on your loyal core customers since it was cheaper than selling and marketing to potential customers.They were your bread and butter, they needed looking after since they would loyaly provide you with regular income for little expense.  Surely it’s about time that Chelsea started to look after these guys because they wil still be coming to the Bridge 20 years down the line, long after Roman has left and we are playing in the Rymans league. The new ‘customers’, sorry fans, that Chelsea are so intent on recruiting and selling merchandising to as part of the plan for global domination certainly won’t be. They’ll happily switch back to Man Utd or Liverpool. Let’s face it investing in a different colour shirt is a lot cheaper than a season ticket!  We’ll be discussing this in the next Chelsea Football FanCast available on Monday and ideas on how we can sort this dilemna out. We’ll also be having a look back at Chelsea’s final game of their Far East tour and the wonderfully named ‘Railway’ cup tournament in Russia. Here’s an idea for starters. As well as actually recognising the Chelsea Youth Group and their request for their own area and cheaper season tickets, Chelsea might think about releasing a number of tickets to the local schools, very much like Rugby clubs have been doing for years. Something like 10 tickets per school in the Chelsea catchment area per home game would certainly cement new fans who would be hooked for life. And you know what, they might actually live round the corner, in the nicest sense of the word!!. Now that’s what I call care in the community!!!