Fan engagement support for English football clubs
Structured, evidenced fan engagement that meets the IFR standard and earns the trust of your supporters.
The Football Governance Act 2025 makes fan consultation a mandatory condition of every IFR operating licence. Every regulated club in the top five tiers of English men's professional football must consult regularly with representatives of its fans on the matters that shape the club: its strategic direction, business priorities, ticket pricing, matchday operations and heritage.
Most clubs already talk to their supporters. Far fewer can show that the conversation was representative, that it took place before decisions were made, and that the board genuinely considered what fans said. Under the licensing regime, that evidence is what counts.
Lagom Sports Compliance helps clubs build fan engagement that works in practice and stands up to regulatory scrutiny, from an independent audit and a bespoke strategy through to running your consultation for you, now and as the regulation develops.
Read: IFR football club licensing | Read: The Football Governance Act 2025
Fan consultation is now a licence condition. The question is no longer whether a club engages with its fans, but whether it can prove it.
What the law now requires
A mandatory licence condition
Fan consultation is one of four conditions the IFR must attach to every operating licence. Clubs must carry out regular consultation with people elected by their fans to represent their views, or with people the IFR accepts as representing those views.
Consultation on defined matters
The Act sets out what clubs must consult on: the club's strategic direction and objectives, its business priorities, operational and matchday issues including ticket pricing, the club's heritage, and its plans for further fan engagement.
Protection for club heritage
A club must not make material changes to its crest or its predominant home shirt colours unless it has taken reasonable steps to establish that a majority of its fans in England and Wales support the change. Changing a team's name requires the approval of the Football Association.
Evidence, not assertion
Clubs are expected to show how fan views were considered in their decision-making, including through annual reporting on fan consultation. Engagement that is not recorded is engagement a club will struggle to demonstrate.
A live timetable
The provisional licence application window opens on 2 November 2026. Every regulated club must hold an operating licence to compete from the 2027/28 season, and the fan consultation condition must then be met for as long as the licence is held.
Fan engagement under the Football Governance Act 2025 is not a voluntary commitment or a communications activity. It is a set of specific obligations, attached to the licence every regulated club needs in order to compete.
The problem: fan engagement is wildly inconsistent
| Common Issue | What We See in Practice |
|---|---|
| Inconsistent Strategies | Some clubs have a considered, well-structured fan engagement strategy. Others have a document written quickly by someone without specialist engagement expertise, often as an addition to a communications, ticketing or community role. |
| Plans That Are Not Delivered | A strategy on paper is not engagement in practice. Forums lapse, meetings are postponed, and commitments made to supporters are not followed through. |
| Engagement That Is Not Evidenced | Consultation that does take place is often not properly recorded. There is no clear account of what fans were asked, what they said, what the board decided and why. |
| Records That Do Not Last | Where records exist, they are frequently incomplete, held by a single individual, or lost when that person leaves the club. |
Across English football, the quality of fan engagement varies enormously, between clubs and between divisions. In our experience, the gaps tend to fall into four areas.
The inconsistency is not simply a question of size or budget. Some smaller clubs have deep, long-standing relationships with their supporters but little to show for them on paper. Some larger clubs have well-resourced structures that are weaker in substance than they appear. Under the licensing regime, both carry risk.
What good fan engagement looks like in practice
Representative - Fan representatives are elected or appointed through a fair and transparent process, and reflect the breadth of the fan base rather than only its most vocal groups.
Timely - Fans are consulted before decisions are made, not informed of them afterwards.
Owned by the board - The strategy is approved and overseen at board level, and fan input feeds into board discussion on the matters it concerns.
Delivered as planned - Consultation happens when the strategy says it will, and commitments made to supporters are followed through.
Evidenced - A clear, retained record of what was asked, what was said, what was decided and why. "You said, we did" is documented, not assumed.
Further reading:
Lagom Sports Compliance’s fan engagement support
We offer three levels of support. Each builds on the one before, and clubs can start at any level and move up as their needs change.
- ✓Fan engagement audit of your current arrangements: what is working and what is not
- ✓Review of existing representative structures, consultation records and evidence
- ✓Gap analysis against the fan consultation requirements of the Football Governance Act 2025
- ✓Benchmarking against effective practice across English football
- ✓A bespoke fan engagement strategy document, including recommended consultation mechanisms
- ✓Senior-level presentation of findings and strategy to the board
- Engage with supporters informally but have little of it documented
- Have a strategy in place but are unsure it would withstand regulatory scrutiny
- Have internal capacity to run consultation once the strategy is set
- Want an independent view before their licence application
- ✓Everything in Foundation
- ✓Retained management of your consultation programme
- ✓Quarterly or bi-annual fan forums, planned and facilitated
- ✓Agendas aligned to the matters clubs are required to consult on
- ✓Documented input, decisions and outcomes from every session
- ✓An evidence record maintained for licensing and annual reporting
- ✓Periodic review of the strategy as regulation develops
- Want consultation delivered consistently, not dependent on one person's diary
- Do not have dedicated fan engagement resource in-house
- Need a reliable evidence trail without building one from scratch
- Want to show delivery against their strategy over time
- ✓Everything in Foundation and Managed
- ✓A Fractional Fan Engagement Officer resourced into the club
- ✓Set days per week or month, scaled to your club's needs
- ✓Fan base profiling as standing practice
- ✓Day-to-day engagement with supporter groups and fan representatives
- ✓Regular board reporting on engagement activity and outcomes
- ✓Support on consultation for significant decisions, including heritage changes
- Have a large or diverse fan base with many supporter groups
- Face high public and media scrutiny of club decisions
- Want a named specialist embedded in the club
- Anticipate significant decisions on ticketing, heritage or the ground
No off-the-shelf toolkit
We do not arrive with a fixed set of tools. Surveys, elected forums, fan advisory boards, online voting and other mechanisms all have their place, but the right combination depends on your club, your fan base and what the audit and strategy work reveal.
Our recommendations are grounded in benchmarking of what is genuinely effective and aligned to the purpose of fan engagement, rather than what is merely common practice. A mechanism that works well for one club's supporters can fail another's.
We design for yours.
Supporting your club now and as regulation develops
How Lagom supports your fan engagement
From licence application through the full licence period
With the provisional licence application window opening on 2 November 2026, clubs need fan engagement arrangements that are in place, working and evidenced. We help clubs establish where they stand, close the gaps and build the evidence base their application will rely on.
The fan consultation condition applies for as long as a club holds its licence. We help clubs keep consultation running, keep records current, prepare for annual reporting and manage consultation on significant decisions, including any proposed changes to the crest or home shirt colours.
The IFR framework is new. Guidance will be refined, expectations will mature and the regulator's early decisions will shape the standard in practice. We track those developments and adjust your club's approach, so that its fan engagement continues to meet the requirements as they change.
Fan engagement is one strand of the wider IFR licensing framework, alongside financial resilience, governance, ownership integrity and ground safety. Our fan engagement support can be commissioned as a standalone engagement, or bundled with our IFR operating licence support, governance framework design and ongoing regulatory monitoring.
Bundling means your fan engagement evidence is built to fit the rest of your licence application from the start, avoiding duplication and ensuring the work your club invests in supports every part of its regulatory position.
Fan engagement and your IFR licence
Speak to us today
Whether you are starting from scratch or want an independent view of the arrangements you already have, we can help you understand where your club stands and what it needs to do next.
Common questions about fan engagement and the IFR
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Yes. The Football Governance Act 2025 makes fan consultation one of the mandatory conditions attached to every IFR operating licence. Regulated clubs must carry out regular consultation with people elected by their fans to represent their views, or with people the IFR accepts as representing them.
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It applies to regulated clubs in the top five tiers of English men's professional football. Every regulated club must hold an IFR operating licence to compete from the 2027/28 season, and the fan consultation condition forms part of that licence.
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The Act specifies five areas:
the club's strategic direction and objectives
the club's business priorities
operational and matchday issues, including ticket pricing
the club's heritage, including its home ground, crest, home shirt colours and team name
the club's plans for further fan engagement
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The Act requires consultation with fan representatives who are either elected by fans or accepted by the IFR as representing them. A fan advisory board is a common way to meet that requirement, but a board that is not genuinely representative will not do the job on its own. The right structure depends on your club and your fan base, which is what our audit and strategy work establishes.
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It may be a good foundation, but most existing arrangements were not designed around the Act. The questions that matter are whether your representatives are genuinely representative, whether you consult on all the required matters before decisions are made, and whether you can evidence how fan views were considered. A Foundation engagement answers those questions.
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A regulated club must not make material changes to its crest or predominant home shirt colours unless it has taken reasonable steps to establish that a majority of its fans in England and Wales support the change. We help clubs design and run those consultations, and document the steps taken.
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Yes. Fan engagement support can be commissioned on its own or bundled with our IFR operating licence support and wider IFR compliance services, so your fan engagement evidence is built to fit the rest of your application.
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Very likely. The IFR will refine its guidance and its early decisions will shape expectations in practice. Our Managed and Outsourced levels include periodic review of your strategy, and we can support Foundation clients with a review as the regulation matures.