Walsall FC Supporters Survey

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Walsall FC Supporters Survey

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2012

Walsall FC

Supporters Survey

2011/2012

Conducted and analysed by Darren Rhodes


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Contents

1. The first section will deal with demographic data (age/gender).

2. Then we move on to home attendance and factors underlying support for Walsall FC.3. The next section looks at why people come to games, and conversely why they do not come to games.

4. We will then look at perceptions from the club from a pricing point of view.

5. We then move on to a principal component analysis and correlation analysis telling us about the relationship

between questions (variables) within this survey.


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Methodology

The following survey adopted an online survey methodology, inviting supporters from various social networking sites and

upthesaddlers.com to complete a brief 22 item questionnaire.

The questions chosen were adapted from the official football league survey but also tailored to meet the current social perceptions of

Walsall F.C. The questions were not biased or leading: all responses were equally weighted with positive or negative answers.

This survey (n = 216) actually achieved more responses than the official football league survey (n = 169). Data was reduced to 196 due to

individuals not filling out 80% of the questionnaire.

Nominal/Categorical Data & Demographics

0

5

10

15

20

25

Under 16 16-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 Over 65

Percenta

ge(%)

Age Group

Age of Respondents

0.00

10.00

20.00

30.00

40.00

50.00

60.00

70.00

80.00

90.00

100.00

Male Female

Percenta

ge(%)

Gender

Gender Response


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0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

0 Games 1-5 Games 6-10 Games 11-15Games 16-20Games 21-23Games

Frequency

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

0 - 20 Miles 20-40 Miles 40-80 Miles 80-100 Miles 100+ Miles

Frequency

Attendance

The following two questions examined how often people attended matches and how individuals travel when they do..

How many Home games do you attend per season? How far do you travel to each home game?


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0

20

40

60

80

100

120

No Response Cheaper than separate

tickets

Gives priority access for

cup matches

Guarantees me a ticket

for every match

It enables me to sit in

the same seat

To demonstrate loyalty

to the club

Frequency

Reasons for going or not going to games

What is the main factor for you purchasing a season ticket?

It appears that there is no central reason that suggests why people purchase season tickets, but given the spread of the data it can be asserted that

individuals personal situation gives rise to why they purchase a season ticket.


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0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

Excellent Value for Money Good Value for Money Fair Value for Money Poor Value for Money Very Poor Value for Money

F

requency

In terms of price, do you consider Walsall FC to offer a match- day product that is?

The data here show a lovely normal (Gaussian) distribution in response to the above question. This again suggests that people do in general think that

the price of the match-day product is fair but this could actually be improved (but it is also not too bad).


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0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

18

Can't go to every

game

Don't want to go to

every game

Family

commitments

I don't feel

appreciated by theclub

Jeff Bonser Poor on-pitch

performance

The club and the

'rent' situation

The poor

relationshipbetween

supporters and

club

Too expensive

Frequency

Why do you not go to games anymore? Why do you not purchase a ticket?

There appears to be a trend of reasons (highlighted in yellow) towards the chairman and fan-board relations that account for most of the variability for why

people are not attending Walsall FC games anymore.


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0

10

20

30

40

50

60

No Response Economic Recession No idea or opinion People have become

disinterested with the

club

People have stayed

away due to Jeff Bonser

Poor on-pitch

performance

Frequency

If you attend games why do you think people are not attending?

This graph shows that perceptions of people who attend games believe that the reason why people are not attending is due to poor on-pitch, disinterest with

the club and the chairman. The club should stop using the economic recession as a reason why people are not attending as it seems this is not the case.


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0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

No Response Non-attending

supporter

Not involved in any

way described

Occasional match

attender (1-10 gamesper season)

Professional

involvement with theclub

Regular match

attender (10 plusgames per season)

Season ticket holder

Frequency

Which of the following describes your match day involvement with Walsall FC?

This graph further demonstrates that many of the respondents to this survey are season ticket holders or regular match attendees.


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0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

Strongly Agree Agree Neither agree or disagree Disagree Strongly Disagree

Frequency

How much do you agree that Walsall FC plays an important role in your familys life?

There is a trend here to suggest that people generally agree that Walsall FC plays an important role in the family life of some individuals, but it is also

interesting that others disagree (but not as much).


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0

10

20

30

40

50

60

1 - Extremely

devalued

2 3 4 5 - No opinion 6 7 8 9 10 - Extremely

valued

Frequency

As a supporter, how valued do you feel your opinion is to the board of the football club? On a scale of 1 -

10:1 represents extremely devalued. 10 represents extremely valued.

This histogram clearly shows a massively skewed negative distribution with a huge percentage of people believing that their opinion is not valued at all by the

Walsall FC board.


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0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

1 - Very poor 2 3 4 5 - No opinion 6 7 8 9 10 - Very

Good

Freq

uency

How would you describe the relationship between board of Walsall FC and the supporters?

Again, confirming the results of the above histogram; there is a massively skewed negative distribution showing that supporters say that the relationship

between the board of Walsall FC is very poor. This must be addressed.


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0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

No Response Club communicates

well but doesn't usemy action

Club communicates

well to supportersand uses ideas

generated from my

actions

Club has outstanding

club-supporterrelationship.

Listened to but my

action's seemdevalued or ignored

No involvement at

all - very poorrelationship

between club-

supporter

No real opinion

Frequency

As a supporter how involved do you feel with how the football club is run?

This graph shows a spread of results that again show that people think that the relationship between the club and the supporter on the street is poor and not

good enough (highlighted in yellow).


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0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

Strongly Agree Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly Disagree

Frequency

Do you think Fans Focus meetings are important and should continue more often than they do presently?

This histogram shows that people overwhelmingly agree that more fans focus meetings should take place more often than they do now. The last one was in

July of last year. That is far too long and this needs to be addressed in order to strengthen club-fan bonds (as shown in the results of this survey).


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0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

Strongly Agree Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly Disagree

Frequency

In your own experience and opinion, how much do you agree with the statement: The Chairman of Walsall

FC values my support

Here we have a question that indicates that many people think that the chairman of the football club does not value the support of Walsall supporters.


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0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

Vastly Overachieving Achieving more than

expected

Achieving as expected Underachieving more than

expected

Vastly underachieving

Frequency

How would you describe the current performance of Walsall FC in League One?

This histogram shows that supporters generally think the team is doing ok or underachieving. The football club should be trying to better itself each season

and at current the club seems to be going backwards or stagnating which is shown in these results.


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0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

Extremely good Good No real opinion Poor Very poor

Fr

equency

How would you describe the match day atmosphere at Walsall FC?

These results show a negative trend to the view that the match day atmosphere at Walsall FC is not good enough and needs completely addressing,

refreshing and improving.


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0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

Very good Good No opinion Poor Very Poor

Frequency

How would you describe the match day package at Walsall FC? Including team, stewarding, match day

announcer, food available etc

This graph shows a general central distribution of results, indicating that peoples personal perceptions of the match day pa ckage of the situation probably

manifest in a whole host of reasons why individuals think the package is good or poor.


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Individual differences and component analyses

The following section is a correlation analysis of all independent variables in the above study. A single star (*) indicates a significant correlation at .05

significance level, and two stars (**) an extremely significant correlation at .01 in a two tailed analyses.

I conducted a principal component analysis, using eigenvalues over 1 in order to discover how many components in the data set could be grouped together

in order to explain most of the data. The 13 components here reflect 13 questions that were scaled in data (non-categorical) and therefore could be used in

the described analyses. The initial 13 components are basically 13 questions and are described briefly in the second table. Please get in touch with me if you

wish to know more about this process and the variables.

The Analysis produced the following principal component extraction:

Total Variance Explained

ExtractionMethod:PrincipalComponentAnalysis.

So therefore, we can see that there are 5 components within the data that account for most of the data.

Component

Initial Eigenvalues Extraction Sums of Squared Loadings Rotation Sums of Squared Loadings

Total % of Variance Cumulative % Total % of Variance Cumulative % Total % of Variance Cumulative %

1 3.282 25.250 25.250 3.282 25.250 25.250 2.685 20.656 20.6562 1.734 13.337 38.587 1.734 13.337 38.587 1.847 14.204 34.860

3 1.254 9.646 48.233 1.254 9.646 48.233 1.483 11.411 46.271

4 1.172 9.014 57.247 1.172 9.014 57.247 1.295 9.961 56.232

5 1.056 8.121 65.368 1.056 8.121 65.368 1.188 9.136 65.368

6 .839 6.452 71.820

7 .719 5.527 77.348

8 .663 5.101 82.449

9 .590 4.539 86.988

10 .529 4.068 91.056

11 .418 3.215 94.271

12 .401 3.084 97.35413 .344 2.646 100.000


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This next matrix shows the correlations between all of the variables in relation to a component:

Component Matrix(a)

Component

1 2 3 4 5

Homegames .478 .636 -.134 .196 -.088

TravelDistance1 -.052 -.547 .150 -.282 .599

AwayGames .381 .489 .024 .168 .572

WFCFamilylife -.381 -.476 .275 .456 -.124

CustomerValuation1 .778 -.037 .153 .047 -.097

RelationshipBoardfans1 .735 -.164 .284 .128 -.018

PricePerception1 -.653 -.113 .251 .161 -.110

FanInvolvement1 .662 -.068 .382 -.059 -.238

FansFocus1 .116 -.222 -.261 .732 .381ChairValuesSupport1 -.582 .426 -.029 -.267 .215

TeamPerformLeagueOne1.010 .172 .750 -.138 .256

Atmosphere1 -.384 .414 .403 .321 -.027

MatchDayPackage1 -.501 .294 .177 .201 -.102

Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis.a 5 components extracted.

So the next step is a bit intuitive but the aim of the game is to look at which variables correlate with which component in order to see what the component

means.

It can be suggested component 1 (which account for most of the data) correlates highly with (1) how fans feel they are involved with the club, (2) the

perception of how fair the match day price is, (3) the match day package, (4) how the chairman values support but also hugely with how (5) the relationship

between the board and the supporters and (6) how valued the opinion of a supporter is to the board. The last two correlate hugely (.778 and .735) but

importantly correlate with no other component which suggests that the first factor is the RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE CLUB AND THE SUPPORTERS. So


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this suggests that the number one reason for discontent or the factor which plays most part in the response of supporters to questions in the survey is the

degree to which an individual feels the bond is between the board and the fan on the street.

Significant correlations

The following is a matrix of correlations. * = significant at .05 level, ** = significant at .01 level.

Correlations

Homegames

TravelDistance1

AwayGame

sWFCFamilylife

CustomerValuation1

RelationshipBoardfans1

PricePerception1

FanInvolvement1

FansFocus1

ChairValuesSupport1

TeamPerformLeagueOne1

Atmosphere1

MatchDayPackage1

Homegames PearsonCorrelation

1 -.358(**).378(**

)-

.268(**).280(**) .187(*) -.356(**) .196(**) .016 -.119 .042 .060 -.067

Sig.(2-tailed)

.000 .000 .000 .000 .011 .000 .008 .833 .107 .573 .421 .370

N 196 190 196 185 185 185 186 185 182 185 185 183 184

TravelDistance1

PearsonCorrelation

-.358(**

)1 -.002 .068 .017 .070 .009 .013 .025 -.078 .036

-.148(*)

-.105

Sig.(2-tailed)

.000 .975 .366 .818 .352 .907 .864 .743 .298 .634 .048 .164

N190 190 190 180 180 180 184 180 177 180 180 178 179AwayGames Pears

onCorrelation

.378(**)

-.002 1-

.271(**).207(**) .182(*) -.237(**) .131 .101 .021 .060 .077 -.097

Sig.(2-tailed

.000 .975 .000 .005 .013 .001 .077 .175 .773 .416 .302 .192


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)

N 196 190 196 185 185 185 186 185 182 185 185 183 184

WFCFamilylife PearsonCorrelation

-.268(**

).068

-.271(**

)1 -.240(**) -.137 .339(**) -.138 .153(*) -.070 .059 .087 .123

Sig.(2-tailed)

.000 .366 .000 .001 .064 .000 .061 .039 .344 .424 .240 .095

N 185 180 185 185 185 185 177 185 182 185 185 183 184

CustomerValuation1

PearsonCorrelation

.280(**)

.017.207(**

)-

.240(**)1 .633(**) -.366(**) .497(**) .052 -.414(**) .024

-.231(**

)-.298(**)

Sig.(2-tailed)

.000 .818 .005 .001 .000 .000 .000 .483 .000 .744 .002 .000

N 185 180 185 185 185 185 177 185 182 185 185 183 184

RelationshipBoardfans1

PearsonCorrelation

.187(*) .070 .182(*) -.137 .633(**) 1 -.255(**) .518(**) .128 -.415(**) .100-

.220(**)

-.267(**)

Sig.(2-tailed)

.011 .352 .013 .064 .000 .001 .000 .084 .000 .174 .003 .000

N 185 180 185 185 185 185 177 185 182 185 185 183 184

PricePerception1

PearsonCorrelation

-.356(**

).009

-.237(**

).339(**) -.366(**) -.255(**) 1 -.312(**) -.041 .316(**) .018

.250(**)

.300(**)

Sig.

(2-tailed)

.000 .907 .001 .000 .000 .001 .000 .594 .000 .816 .001 .000

N 186 184 186 177 177 177 186 177 174 177 177 176 177

FanInvolvement1

PearsonCorre

.196(**)

.013 .131 -.138 .497(**) .518(**) -.312(**) 1 -.036 -.384(**) .127-

.157(*)-.258(**)


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lation

Sig.(2-tailed)

.008 .864 .077 .061 .000 .000 .000 .629 .000 .085 .034 .000

N 185 180 185 185 185 185 177 185 182 185 185 183 184

FansFocus1 PearsonCorrelation

.016 .025 .101 .153(*) .052 .128 -.041 -.036 1 -.172(*) -.115 -.069 -.055

Sig.(2-tailed)

.833 .743 .175 .039 .483 .084 .594 .629 .020 .122 .358 .458

N 182 177 182 182 182 182 174 182 182 182 182 180 181

ChairValuesSupport1

PearsonCorrelation

-.119 -.078 .021 -.070 -.414(**) -.415(**) .316(**) -.384(**)-

.172(*)1 .078

.200(**)

.288(**)

Sig.(2-tailed)

.107 .298 .773 .344 .000 .000 .000 .000 .020 .292 .007 .000

N 185 180 185 185 185 185 177 185 182 185 185 183 184

TeamPerformLeagueOne1

PearsonCorrelation

.042 .036 .060 .059 .024 .100 .018 .127 -.115 .078 1 .142 .017

Sig.(2-tailed)

.573 .634 .416 .424 .744 .174 .816 .085 .122 .292 .055 .818

N 185 180 185 185 185 185 177 185 182 185 185 183 184

Atmosphere1 Pears

onCorrelation

.060 -.148(*) .077 .087 -.231(**) -.220(**) .250(**) -.157(*) -.069 .200(**) .142 1 .328(**)

Sig.(2-tailed)

.421 .048 .302 .240 .002 .003 .001 .034 .358 .007 .055 .000


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N 183 178 183 183 183 183 176 183 180 183 183 183 183

MatchDayPackage1

PearsonCorrelation

-.067 -.105 -.097 .123 -.298(**) -.267(**) .300(**) -.258(**) -.055 .288(**) .017.328(**

)1

Sig.(2-

tailed)

.370 .164 .192 .095 .000 .000 .000 .000 .458 .000 .818 .000

N 184 179 184 184 184 184 177 184 181 184 184 183 184

** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).* Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).

N.B. What has not been mentioned before is that the teams current performance in league correlates with NO other variable indicating that this question

has no relationship with why people are not attending games.

There is a multitude of significant correlations in the above table; I think it is important for not one person to discuss these results (including the whole of

the document) as statistics is all about interpretation. Some of the results are extremely transparent and show a real need to improve certain things at the

club. But, I believe discussion and communication is very important.

We are all Walsall supporters at the end of the day, and we should pull together in times like this. It is clear that something needs addressing. It is now up to

the club and supporters to understand why people are frustrated and work together to achieve a better Walsall FC.

If you wish to get in touch with myself (Darren) about any aspects of the study or if you require more information please contact me on the following

email address:[email protected]

Thank you for all of the people who took the time to fill in this survey. This could not be done without you. I hope everyone involved with Walsall FC realises

that is also true if we want to make a progressive and positive Walsall FC. We need to understand each other but most importantly talk.

Up the saddlers!
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]

Documents

Walsall FC Supporters Survey