Conceptualizing sustainable participation in the context of German football supporters

According to Critcher (1979), traditional football supporters see themselves as members who have a long-term personal and emotional investment in as well as a reciprocal relationship including rights and obligations with a club. Members distinguish themselves from football customers or consumers, whose relationship with a club is more instrumental in nature and is characterized by lower degrees of loyalty. Customers/consumers attend matches, buy merchandise, and consume football club services through the media. They are not loyal to a particular club. Instead, they gather sufficient information about the market and ultimately choose an option which they perceive as the most beneficial, such as clubs that show promise to achieve the highest sporting success. Building on Critcher’s work, and referring to the extent of football supporters’ personal identification with a club, Giulianotti (2002) suggests that four ideal categories can describe football supporters: supporter, follower, fan, and flaneur. For the purpose of this article, we place particular attention on the definitions of Critcher (1979) and Giulianotti (2002) and characterize members/supporters by their long-term emotional attachment to and high degree of personal solidarity with their clubs.

Through their membership, members/supporters have a great interest in shaping the governance structures and processes of their club (and by extension of the game itself). However, we also need to consider that member/supporter participation might also limit a professional football clubs’ ability to achieve its goals. During general meetings, members are involved in policy processes and so they can modify existing goals and formulate new goals through democratic decision-making (Adam, Bauers, & Hovemann, 2020). In this context, the work of Roose and Schäfer (2017) is relevant, as they distinguish between supporter involvement and supporter participation in a club’s decision-making. An example of supporter involvement is attending a football game, whereby supporters contribute to creating a unique stadium atmosphere, and hence enhance the overall (commercial) attractiveness of a football match (Edensor, 2015).

Concerning supporter participation in decision-making, Roose and Schäfer (2017) distinguish between non-institutionalized and institutionalized forms of participation. Non-institutionalized forms of participation are more informal and may arise spontaneously or through grassroots efforts. They are not established through official club channels, but structures still play a role in influencing decision-making. They may arise when supporters feel that institutionalized mechanisms are not adequately addressing their needs or when they want to draw attention to specific issues. A typical form of non-institutionalized supporter participation is supporter activism. Various studies discuss how supporter protests and mobilization have emerged as a response to several “‑ization” processes of football and its cultures, such as globalization, commercialization, and mediatization (Dixon, 2020; King, 2002; Millward, 2011). More recently, Ludvigsen (2023) discusses how football supporters have contested security-related changes, policies, and discourses related to the regulation of banners, body-checks, surveillance technologies, policing, and other security measures. Fanzines (short for fan magazines) have also played a significant role in the development of supporter activism aiming to ensure a more democratic and participatory game (Fitzpatrick & Hoey, 2022). Created and published by supporters for supporters, these forms of grassroots journalism have sought to challenge the clubs’ uncritical official match day programs (Duke, 2002). They cover supporter campaigns and other sociopolitical issues affecting both the game and the club, with ticket prices, disconnections between clubs and local communities, and restrictions and regulations of supporter practices discussed (Millward, 2011). Although digital football fandom, supporter movements, and supporter media have not replaced traditional fan cultures, digital spaces such as e‑zines (digital fanzines), online forums, podcasts, and fan TV channels have had a transformative effect on supporter activism and the various ways clubs engage with their supporters (Cleland, Doidge, Millward, & Widdop, 2018). Today, many clubs employ digital and social media to engage with their supporters through online forums, online surveys, or interactive sessions allowing supporters to express their opinions.

The second category of participation, institutionalized forms, refers to the formalized and structured mechanisms that are put in place by football clubs or governing bodies to involve supporters in decision-making processes. These mechanisms create a systematic framework for supporter participation and ensure that their voices are considered in key decisions. Examples of institutionalized participation discussed in the literature include supporter representation on club boards, supporters’ trusts or supporter ownership, and membership structures with voting rights.

Hamil, Michie, Oughton, and Warby (2000) suggest that the inclusion of supporter directors (i.e., representatives of the supporters on the board of directors or supervisory boards) will enhance democratic processes. This suggestion is based on the belief that internal constituencies, such as players, managers, owners, and supporters should have access to participation. In this context, Lomax (2000) emphasizes the potential to increase supporter satisfaction and improve accountability. This argument is supported by Adam et al. (2020), who stress that for supporter representation on clubs boards to be effective, elected supporters should have full voting power. However, McLeod, Jenkin, Walters, and Irving (2021) point to certain challenges that often inhibit supporter directors to perform effectively and therefore they provide avenues for overcoming these challenges. These avenues build on a clear understanding of the roles of a supporter director (i.e., promoting supporter interests in board meetings, acting as a conduit for information, and complying with their fiduciary duties) and an analysis of how board-level social interaction influences supporter director performance. Their analysis showed that supporter directors believed that to effectively fulfill their roles requires the ability to initiate and sustain patterns of social exchange with their board colleagues.

Stronger forms of institutionalized participation are supporters’ trusts or supporter ownership. These have become popular in the UK since the early 2000s as a response to uncertainties about the directions of football clubs, having gained traction with the support of the Labour government and establishment of Supporters Direct in 2000. Since 2018, the representation of supporters’ interests in the UK is within the remit of the Football Supporters’ Association, which was established after a merger between Supporters Direct and the Football Supporters’ Federation (Breen & Hoey, 2022). Supporters’ trusts are cooperative-like organizations established by supporters with the aim of acquiring full or partial ownership of football clubs, representing supporter interests in a football club’s strategic and management decisions, and strengthening the connection between the club and the community (Ward & Parnell, 2019). While the value of the supporters’ trust model in football has been successful and praised by various stakeholders, such as football governing bodies, expert groups, and trusts themselves (García & Welford, 2015), it is not without criticism. Critics argue that supporters’ trusts might not truly represent the opinions and interests of all supporters, that their influence over clubs’ key decisions is limited, and that their dependence on supporter contributions and fundraising and hence their limited financial capacity can restrict a trust’s ability to acquire significant ownership in the club (Brown, 2007; Kennedy & Kennedy, 2007; Martin, 2007).

The strongest form of institutionalized participation is membership structures with voting rights, which is particularly characteristic for German football. Adam et al. (2020) argue that supporter participation is institutionalized at the league and club levels. The former is regulated by the so-called 50+1 Rule, which was introduced in 1998 by the German Football Association (DFB, 1999). Before 1998, German professional football clubs were all member owned, with the rule allowing clubs to outsource their professional football team (e.g., GmbH or AG). In the case of an outsourced professional football team, the rule still ensures institutionalized supporter participation of club members in German professional football (one member = one vote). Its proponents see the rule as justified since, for example, it protects clubs from the influence of external investors and preserves the identification of supporters and clubs (Bauers & Hovemann, 2019).

At the club level, supporter participation is institutionalized in such a way that through their membership, supporters have the right to participate in a club’s decision-making processes. For example, membership rights grant supporters voting power, which allows them to elect a board of directors in the general meeting. However, Adam et al. (2020) highlight certain barriers to supporter participation: at league level, there are exemptions and circumventions of the 50+1 Rule, while at club level, the authors point to regulations on convening and conducting the general meeting, club members’ rights to file motions for the general meeting, and the representation of supporter interests in the supervisory bodies. Adam et al. (2020) argue that these barriers need to be overcome, otherwise a transformation into a purely corporate model of professional football, as can be found in other countries, is inevitable.

To summarize, the academic literature surveyed analyzes supporter participation in decision-making, particularly from a supporter-engagement (e.g., supporter activism) and governance (e.g., formalization and institutionalization) approach. What can be concluded from the focus of these theoretical approaches to analyzing supporter participation is that, first, they emphasize the involvement and participation of supporters in their clubs, or in the football ecosystem more widely. Second, a long-term perspective guides these approaches, with supporter engagement aiming to foster strong and enduring connections between supporters and their clubs, while governance aims to establish structures and processes ensuring that supporters can participate in shaping club policies and strategies on an ongoing basis. Third, they recognize that football is community driven. Supporters aim to positively impact local communities within football but to an increasing extent also through football, such as with community outreach initiatives. Building on these arguments, we suggest that for the most part, these characteristics essentially correspond to those that describe the concepts of sustainability and sustainable development, which will be discussed below.

Sustainable development (SD) aims to combine economic growth, social inclusion, and environmental protection (UN, 2015). Thus, taking a systems approach to SD, these three dimensions (economic, social, and environmental) are interlinked and contain both trade-offs and complementarities (Barbier & Burgess, 2017). The mechanisms of participation, introduced in the previous section, can be described as an important aspect of SD as illustrated by SDG 16 of Agenda 2030, which explicitly calls for “responsive, inclusive, participatory, and representative decision-making at all levels” (UN, 2015, p. 30). While keeping in mind that sustainability dimensions often overlap in practice, we argue that participation is most relevant when considering the social dimension. This becomes clear from the definition of the latter by Olawumi and Chan (2018, p. 232) as “social well-being of the populace, balancing the need of an individual with the need for the group (equity), public awareness and cohesion, and participation.” While the authors demonstrate that social sustainability entails more than the participation of certain stakeholders, they also clarify that participation plays a crucial role within the concept. Accordingly, in the current paper, we focus mainly on aspects of social sustainability related to participation.

In this context, we have chosen the approach of Missimer et al. (2017) as a basis for our study for several reasons. First, it is built on the holistic and established Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development which has evolved since the early 1990s (Broman & Robèrt, 2017). Second, while the model aims to challenge the vagueness that often surrounds the concept of social sustainability, it is general enough to allow application across different disciplines (Broman & Robèrt, 2017). Third, it has served as a basis for the development of frameworks (e.g., Haller, Jonsson, & Fröling, 2018; Wilson & Van Der Velden, 2022) and has been extensively discussed in other recent peer-reviewed research (e.g., Roca-Puig, 2019).

The science-based and systematic structuring discussed by Missimer et al. (2017) elaborates on principles for social sustainability. The authors conclude that “in a socially sustainable society, people are not subject to structural obstacles to” (1) health, (2) influence, (3) competence, (4) impartiality, and (5) meaning-making (Missimer et al., 2017, p. 7). We use these five principles as pillars to structure the sustainability elements we deem helpful to develop participation. We identified these elements of social sustainability through an examination of international frameworks related to sustainability (e.g., the GRI or ESG). The outcome of integrating these principles and the relevant elements from various frameworks is depicted in Table 1, with each discussed in turn below.

Building on our discussion, we suggest that supporter participation and social sustainability are interconnected approaches. Effective governance mechanisms can enhance supporter engagement by promoting financial stability and transparent decision-making. In turn, actively engaged supporters contribute to the sustainability of football by supporting their clubs as well as responsible behaviors within the sport. Therefore, approaching supporter participation in decision-making from a social sustainability perspective offers an alternative that both complements and extends the perspectives of existing supporter participation approaches. Meanwhile, although a growing body of research discusses social sustainability and sustainable development in sport, there are no studies that focus on (social) sustainability aspects of decision-making in football organizations themselves. Thus, our article fills a gap in the current sport management literature. We are using the context of German football clubs and the possibilities for their supporters to participate in decision-making in a socially sustainable way. However, we also suggest that our discussion has implications for member organizations in other contexts in and outside of sport.