Crowds are a key part of the spectacle of football — Maybe we should pay them.

Something weird happened last week.

My football team, Newcastle United Football Club, made it into a major final. The League Cup Final.

The League Cup (also called the Carabao Cup) is the second largest cup competition in domestic English football. It’s a big deal. Especially for a club like mine.

The Toon Army haven’t been to a cup final since 1999. They haven’t won anything since the Fairs Cup* in 1969. Despite flirting with league success for a little while in the 90s and 00s, we’ve been thoroughly mediocre for many years.** We’ve been relegated several times over recent years. We’ve consistently sold our best players and bought people who seem to have never meaningfully touched a football before.*** In 2019–20, our top scorer scored 6 goals across a 38 game season. That’s less than a goal every 6 matches or so. Second place was 4 goals. In fact, since our return to the Premier League in 2017, noone has scored more than 12 leagues goals in a season for us.

It’s been rough.

So it was lovely to see that we had made it to a final.

And there’s a lot of interesting things to say about NUFC’s current resurgence. We could talk about the new manager’s tactics (which are really interesting! Find out more here). We could talk about the individual players and how they’ve raised their levels spectacularly (especially Joelinton). We could (and probably should) talk about the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund that recently bought the team and the role of ‘big money’ in football. But I want to talk about something else.

I want to talk about the fans.

If you’ve watched a Newcastle match in the past ten years, I guarantee you will have heard things like:

• “St. James Park (Newcastle United’s stadium) is a really hard place to come for opposition”
• “They have some of the best fans”
• “The fans deserve a better performance than this”
• “Newcastle have some of the most loyal fans in the world”
• “I hated playing there when I was a player, because it’s such an intimidating place to play”

They’re right. St. James Park is a fortress. When teams drive up the A1 to Newcastle, then know that they will be met with over 50,000 screaming fans. There will be coordinated chants. There will be shirtless men. There will be more noise than you’ve heard before. The place is dripping with passion and energy. It’s incredible. I think it’s inarguable that the fans are a huge part of the experience of viewing a Newcastle United football match.

This got me thinking. Wait, are crowds actually a crucial part of the spectacle of English football?

During various COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions, stadiums were empty as the Premier League continued to play. And I think we can all agree it sucked. True, it was fun hearing the individual players swear and I did enjoy hearing the manager’s instructions throughout, but it generally felt… off. It felt flat. Almost unimportant. Missable. Even when TV audiences were given fake crowd noise from FIFA, the atmosphere was still decidedly flat.

It just wasn’t as good without a crowd there.

Similarly, while watching the Qatar World Cup last year, it was clear there was an attendance problem. Games, especially in the earlier rounds of the tournament, were either not well attended or had droves of fans leaving well before the final whistle. Despite the best efforts of the camera operators choosing flattering angles of the crowd, it was clear in several instances that the stadiums were half full or emptier. When the suspiciously high attendance counts were given by Qatari officials, even the neutral commentators couldn’t help but remark that the numbers seemed inflated. And whether or not they actually lied, the lack of a decent crowd could be felt on the pitch. Games were flat, lethargic and relatively low stakes (even in the World Cup!).

It just wasn’t as good without a crowd there.

Now let’s consider the League Cup Final 2023 between Newcastle Utd and Manchester Utd.

Both sets of fans were a huge part of the entertainment of the fixture. Even before the match had started, Newcastle fans had rightly earned plaudits for staying after a pre-game party to clean. As the game was about to start, black and white flags (my team’s colours) filled half the stadium, whilst the other side had thousands of Mancunians**** waved red and white scarves above their head. During the national anthems, TV showed close ups of passionate (and shirtless) Geordies singing ‘God save the Qwing’ (we’re still getting used to it). It was a true advert for stadium sports.

Throughout the (admittedly relatively prosaic and drab) game, the crowd were on top form. Every shot was met with a loud ‘ooooooh!’. Every 50/50 decision had the crowd up in arms. Every foul was met with jeers and screams. There were songs and cheering and noise and it made it feel electric to watch at home. Even though it wasn’t my team, I specifically remember Player of the Match Casemiro flinging his arms up after making a relatively unimportant tackle and hearing the roar of the Manchester United crowd. Electric.

It was clearly so much better having a large live crowd there.

So far I’ve said nothing controversial I don’t think. Football is better with a crowd present. So far so good. But now I want to talk about the changing market for sport and whether the way we treat fans makes sense in modern football.

There is an excellent debate to be had about who the actual audience of football even is. Logic might say that the audience of a football match is the folks in the crowd. The ones actually viewing the sport live. And historically, that has been the conception of it. In fact, British broadcasters aren’t able to show live coverage of games between 2:45pm and 5:25pm on Saturdays because some were worried that live attendance would suffer, both at the top level and in lower leagues. The audience for football is currently thought to be the live crowds.

But is it, actually?

According to SportsJournal.io, Newcastle United earned £37.22m from matchday attendance last financial year, with an average attendance of 51,121. With a total annual revenue of £206.06m, it works out that a smidge of 18% of the total revenue of Newcastle United. It’s definitely not an insignificant amount. But let’s look at the other reported revenue streams:

• Sponsorship — £28.5m (13.8%)
• Retail/Merchandise — £9.2m (4.4%)
• TV Rights — £131.1m (63.6%)

So I’ll ask again, who are the real audience for football? Especially when considering that Newcastle United earn 3.5x more from TV revenue than from match day receipts. Whilst smart people can definitely disagree who the ‘real’ audience is, I think it can’t be argued that the most important part of Newcastle United’s audience financially is TV viewers. Or, to put it another way, financially speaking TV rights are the lifeblood of many, many football clubs.

I’m not claiming that this change is good or bad. I can definitely see both sides. But it’s happening. The total for the domestic and international broadcast rights of the Premier League earned the league £10.5bn over the next 3 seasons, with the international rights alone increasing 30% in value since the 2019–2022 deal. The TV money is growing, and it’s growing fast.

Whilst that has myriad consequences on the League, the question I want to ask is: what happens to the fans?

No longer are the fans the largest audience for the clubs in the league. No longer are fans the largest source of revenue for the club. In our current stage of late capitalism, fans do not own Premier League teams unless they also happen to have billions of pounds. So what happens now?

I’d personally argue that actually the fans who come on the day are actually transitioning from part of the audience to part of the entertainment. Tourists who want to experience the Premier League live do so because they want to chant with the die hard fans. TV audiences don’t want to watch to see empty stadiums or Qatari crowd camera contrivances. Clubs want to show off their fans to gain new ones. The fans are part of the entertainment.

So, to me, it doesn’t make sense that these fans are charged £417–811 for a Newcastle season ticket. It especially doesn’t make sense considering that wages in Newcastle are below national average. It especially especially doesn’t make sense when Newcastle United actually makes the majority of its money from TV rights.

So what’s to be done? Here’s my pitch. We need to seriously re-examine the role of fans in the Premier League. I think that the fans are increasingly part of the product rather than the audience for a show.

I think we should pay them.

There’s a million ways we could do this. Off the top of my head:

• Make season tickets free after a certain number of years.
• Pay especially loyal fans (the ones who bring drums and stuff) for their service to the game.
• The club pays for away game tickets and transport.
• Locals get free tickets (i.e. show a local postcode and get a free ticket).
• You get a free ticket if you turn up in Newcastle colours.
• Dividends/refunds based on teams league performance/cup success/being bought by a Public Investment Fund.
• Free refreshments.
• The more matches you go to, the cheaper they get.
• The more season tickets you buy year after year, the cheaper they get.

Obviously, this would take a lot of thinking through. By no means do I think that this is something anyone should rush to judgement on and I don’t think there’s an obvious way forward right now. We want to make sure that all fans, old and new, get to experience the atmosphere of St. James Park. Changes will be controversial and should be done carefully.

But here’s what i know. Football on TV only work with fans. TV revenue is now more signifcant to every Premier League’s club bottom line than the gate attendance. And I think that’s because those fans are becoming increasingly part of the entertainment, rather than the audience. In my opinion, this transition merits us rethinking how we think of football fans altogether.

In my opinion, we should pay them.

And if we don’t pay them, the least the clubs profiting from them can do is stop hemorrhaging them for season tickets, travel, merch and hospitality.

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* The Fairs Cup became the UEFA cup in 1971. It is currently called the Europa League, which it has been since 2009.

** Yes, Mike Ashley is tosspot. No, I’m not getting into it.

*** That sounds harsh but I have two words for you. Jean-Alain Boumsong.

**** If I’m honest, I suspect the amount of Man Utd supporters who are actually Mancunian is relatively low.