Gary Neville, Michael McIntyre and the exploitation of football fan media | OneFootball

In the spring of 2024, an email dropped into my inbox that invited me to be part of a new app for football fans. Details were purposefully sketchy, but after a phone call outlining the project a little more, I was invited to a meeting with its producers to ‘screen test’ alongside other fans of my club to audition for a role with them, giving analysis and post-match thoughts as one of their contributors.

We were given the sales pitch. In a world where social media was toxic and fans were hunting for clicks by being antagonistic (more on that later), this was designed to be friendlier and less confrontational. Players were rated, matches were reviewed, and moderation was key to avoid abuse in fan debates.

None of this is even slightly problematic, in fact it’s probably a welcome change given how X-formally-Twitter spirals into personal insults and attacks when someone doesn’t think something was a red card or a penalty.

As part of the ‘audition’, a camera was pointed at a selection of prospective contributors while a producer asked ‘agree or disagree’ questions. We held up cards with our position, then were asked to explain our reasoning. The appointed ‘fan experts’ were to give on-the-whistle thoughts and reaction after games, and to rate players and performances – because fans know their teams better than anyone.

At times, through the season, these fans would also be brought into Sky Sports to give reaction as ‘Fanalysts’. The app was named ‘Fanalysis’.

As part of the audition, we were told the origin story; it was a collaboration between Gary Neville and comedian and Spurs fan Michael McIntyre, yet despite being prominently supported by Sky Sports and by two high-profile investors, contributors were told that they couldn’t be paid for their opinions and their work.

I ultimately rejected the offer to be part of the app for that reason. I hate the word, but creating ‘content’ about my football club is part of my income and I’m very careful about the type of content I endorse. This, in theory, is right up my street because there is no part of me that wants to get into debates about which teams’ fans are the worst or why Team X’s achievement isn’t as good as Team Y’s, all in a bid to drive engagement from enraged fans. But I currently earn some (not a lot, but some) money from what I do, so why would I be expected to give it away for free, to a company that has pretty good financial backing?

“We can’t pay for the time being,” I was told, “but we’ll get you and your work in front of the Sky Sports audience and that will hopefully drive other fans to your work from there.”

Spoiler alert: It doesn’t. I’ve been in this game for some time and regular appearances on national radio and television have made absolutely zero impact on the number of people who engage with my work elsewhere. Exposure doesn’t move an audience to your blog, your YouTube channel, your podcast in any numbers at all.

Since rejecting the offer from Fanalysis, I’ve not been invited back to speak to Sky Sports about my football club. Instead, they are exclusively using the Fanalysts as, essentially, free pundits. They are often asked to go head-to-head with ex-players in a row on television, often clipped up for social media engagement.

Fanalysis is currently advertising for a financial officer, a growth marketing manager, a technology officer and a senior software engineer. In those job descriptions, Fanalysis says it is backed by a Series A funding round and from building partnerships with major media platforms and that the ambition is to ‘make fan sentiment the most powerful voice in football and give supporters the platform they’ve always deserved’.

With this sort of model, the scale of the investors, and those sorts of partnerships, shouldn’t those fans who are so crucial to the platform’s success be paid for the services? Why is fan-led media being monetised without the fans being given a portion of the pie?

But perhaps that marketing spiel from Fanalysis is absolutely spot on. There IS a huge gaping hole in the market that they’re attempting to fill, largely because of how the football fan-media landscape has developed. Anyone providing reasoned, uncontroversial debate gets drowned out by those livestreaming their own undiagnosed anger-management issues when their team concedes or by those who want to launch a tirade of tired banter at another fanbase.

Take a look at any of these accounts after a post that is suspiciously on the wind-up or purposefully posting fake information. The profile reads something like TopFootyBanter, it has a paid-for blue tick (which, on X, means good engagement provides a financial reward), and there is often a ‘powered by Rainbet’ in the bio. There are other crypto platforms, betting companies, or gambling firms pushing these accounts – Roobet, Razed, Stake…

In a world where social media accounts are rewarded for engagement – whatever engagement that is – what we’re fed is a reason to interact negatively with a post. Make something up or antagonise a set of supporters; who cares if it’s not accurate when a few hundred thousand people will reply to say you’re wrong? And a few hundred thousand people saying you’re wrong = revenue.

Never has it been easier for fans to send their opinions into the world and never has it been easier for discussions about interesting aspects of football. So how did fan media become an exploitative race to the bottom where the only people who win are the super-rich who run the corporate machines and the gambling companies that prey on the most vulnerable?