As the new football season kicks off, a different kind of league table tells a revealing story about two south west London clubs and their relationships with supporters.
The latest Fan Engagement Index for 2024-25 arrives at a pivotal moment for English football, with the impending arrival of an Independent Football Regulator promising to reshape how clubs engage with their most important stakeholders. In this changing landscape, the contrasting fortunes of AFC Wimbledon and Fulham Football Club offer a compelling glimpse into what the future might hold.
AFC Wimbledon are the only London based football club to make the top 10 for fan engagement according to the Fan Engagement Index for 2024-25, securing seventh place with 205 points and earning a prestigious Silver award. For a club playing in League Two – now promoted back into League One – this achievement represents something remarkable in modern football – proof that meaningful fan engagement isn’t about the size of your stadium or the depth of your pockets.
The Wombles achieved a higher score than last year but finished in seventh place compared to last year’s fourth position. This apparent contradiction – improving yet dropping three places – illustrates how rapidly the standards are rising across English football.
AFC Wimbledon’s score breakdown reveals their particular strengths: 65 points for dialogue, an impressive 80 for governance, and 60 for transparency. The governance score is particularly telling for a fan-owned club that rose from the ashes of the original Wimbledon FC’s controversial relocation to Milton Keynes in 2003. Every board meeting, every major decision, every strategic choice reflects the supporters’ trust that formed this phoenix club.
Fulham’s Middle Ground
Just a few miles away along the Thames, Fulham Football Club presents a different picture entirely. Sitting 29th out of 116 in the Fan Engagement Index with 135 points and no award recognition, the Cottagers find themselves in the middle tier of Premier League clubs when it comes to supporter engagement – just as they do in the real league table.
Fulham’s breakdown shows 50 points for dialogue, 45 for governance, and 40 for transparency. While these numbers aren’t catastrophic, they reflect the broader challenge facing many Premier League clubs: despite Premier League clubs being required to have Fan Advisory Boards, just three made the top 20: Everton, Brighton & Hove Albion and Brentford.
The Cottagers’ position becomes more stark when viewed through historical context. In the 2019/20 Fan Engagement Index, Fulham scored 100 overall, comprised of 35 on dialogue, 45 on governance and 20 on transparency, placing them 26th. Five years later, their overall score has improved to 135, yet they’ve dropped three places to 29th – a pattern that echoes AFC Wimbledon’s experience but from a very different starting point.
The Index awards scores for dialogue, governance and transparency, three pillars that form the foundation of meaningful fan engagement. Kevin Rye, creator of the Index and founder of Think Fan Engagement, has spent seven years developing this objective measurement system that cuts through the PR speak and measures what clubs actually do, not what they say they’ll do.
The scoring methodology is unforgiving in its objectivity. Clubs cannot boost their ratings through expensive marketing campaigns or glossy fan forums. Instead, the index examines concrete evidence: Does the club publish meeting minutes from supporter advisory boards? Are fans genuinely consulted before major decisions? Can supporters access transparent financial information?
Exeter City: The Gold Standard
Exeter City’s perfect 230-point score represents more than just statistical excellence – it demonstrates what pragmatic fan engagement looks like in practice. As a supporter-owned club, Exeter City operates with regular round table discussions where it listens to the opinions of its supporters, with the next scheduled for 18 September.
Clive Harrison, chair of Exeter City Football Club’s supporter experience committee, explains:
“As a supporter-owned club our fans are at the heart of everything we do and we continuously strive to improve both our engagement and the supporter experience.”
The club’s approach goes beyond token consultation – they understand how to run a football business by integrating fans into the decision making processes at every level.
The practical elements that secure Exeter’s dominance include formal fan forums, published meeting minutes, transparent governance structures, and multiple channels for supporter input. What Exeter City and all clubs who are good at Fan Engagement have is a ‘culture of Fan Engagement’ where they don’t view the board or senior management to be separate from the fans on the ground.
The London Paradox
The fact that AFC Wimbledon stands alone as London’s representative in the top 10 speaks to a broader paradox in modern football. The capital, with its concentration of wealth, global brands, and passionate supporter bases, should theoretically dominate fan engagement rankings. Instead, clubs like Exeter City topped the table for a seventh consecutive year followed by Carlisle United and Lincoln City.
This paradox becomes even starker when examining clubs like Wrexham AFC, which has gained global fame through its Hollywood ownership by Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney and the popular ‘Welcome to Wrexham‘ documentary series. Despite rapid promotion through the leagues fuelled by significant investment and unprecedented media attention, Wrexham sits at 98th in the Fan Engagement Index with just 55 points. The club’s celebrity status and financial backing haven’t translated into meaningful fan engagement by the index’s objective measures.
These provincial clubs, operating with a fraction of London clubs’ budgets, consistently outperform their metropolitan counterparts. The reason lies not in resources but in philosophy. Exeter City’s perfect 230-point score didn’t come from expensive consultancy firms or state-of-the-art digital platforms – it came from treating supporters as genuine stakeholders rather than customers.
The Regulatory Revolution
With the new Independent Regulator on the horizon, the message from this year’s Index is clear: fan engagement is no longer optional. The Football Governance Act promises to reshape how clubs interact with their supporters, potentially making the Fan Engagement Index more than just an annual scorecard – it could become a regulatory requirement.
The incoming regulator, following Tracy Crouch’s Fan Led Review, will focus on ensuring clubs maintain proper relationships with their supporters as part of broader governance reforms. This regulatory shift represents the most significant change to football governance in decades, with fan engagement set to become a measurable component of club licensing and oversight.
For AFC Wimbledon, this regulatory shift validates an approach they’ve followed since their formation. The Dons Trust, the supporters’ trust that owns the club, operates with a level of transparency and accountability that other clubs are now scrambling to implement.
Fulham, like many Premier League clubs, faces a more complex challenge. How do you balance the demands of global investors, commercial partners, and regulatory compliance while maintaining authentic connections with the local community that has supported the club for generations?
Clubs that prioritise transparency, governance and meaningful dialogue are not just meeting regulatory expectations – they’re building stronger, more sustainable futures. In the end, that’s a lesson worth learning, whether you’re in League Two or the Premier League, whether you’re fan-owned or backed by international investment.
The conversation between club and supporter never ends – it’s just a question of whether both sides are truly listening.
