Fan intelligence for football clubs
The loyalty thinking that transformed retail, built for football. We help clubs at every level understand their supporters and build relationships that reward fan and club alike.
What We Do
1995The year loyalty changed retail
Retail learned to read its customers in 1995. Loyalty schemes, purchase histories and behavioural data turned retailers’ customer bases into millions of individuals: each understood, benefiting the retailer and the customer alike.
That thinking spread into banking, travel, grocery and media. Wherever there was customer data, the same shift followed: stop treating everyone the same, and start earning loyalty person by person.
Whilst football has the loyalty that retailers are fighting for, clubs also hold similar data to revolutionise how they treat their fans.
That data flows through ticketing systems, club apps, merchandise platforms and food-and-beverage tills every single matchday. The problem is that it sits in silos.
No single view of the fan. No way to tell who is drifting before they lapse. The same email lands with the thirty-year season-ticket holder who books European away trips and the fan who came twice last season and has not opened the app since March. Now it is football’s turn to understand every supporter.
Other industries left one-size-fits-all behind in the 1990s. Football is only now catching up.
What it is for
Every engagement is built around goals your board will recognise. We never put a number on it before we have seen your data, but this is what the work is designed to move.
Spot the supporters who are drifting before they go quiet, and give your team time to win them back. Protect renewals rather than replace them.
Put the right offer in front of the right fan at the right point in the season, instead of discounting to everyone.
Replace one email for everyone with communications that reflect who each supporter is to the club.
Know your audience well enough to show sponsors and commercial partners exactly who they are reaching.
Our approach
We help clubs build towards the kind of loyalty and customer understanding that retail has spent thirty years perfecting. That means knowing who your supporters are, what they value and when they are drifting, then acting on it with the same confidence a leading retailer would.
The route there is different for every club. It might be a single view of the fan, a sharper CRM programme, a loyalty proposition, or implementing our own Fan Intelligence Model. Whether you have a data team ready to run with it or you are starting from scratch, we stay with you, from the first workshop to the decisions that follow season after season.
In practice
One of the tools we bring. Tailored to your club, it looks at every supporter through three lenses, then combines them to show who your most valuable fans are, who is most loyal, and who is at risk of drifting away.
How often they come, and which way it is heading.
Not just how many games, but which ones, what was missed, and whether a fan is coming more or less often than in previous seasons.
What they buy, and what it says about them.
How recently, how often and how much a fan spends, read against the football calendar rather than the financial year. What a fan buys, and when, tells you who they are to the club.
How connected they are between matchdays.
The fan who checks the app every day, even when they cannot get a ticket. App behaviour is often the clearest sign of demand that ticket sales alone cannot show.
An illustration
Here is an example of what the model can reveal. Combine the three dimensions and supporters fall into distinct types, each with its own commercial profile and each needing a different approach. Select a type to read it on the chart.
These four are illustrative. Every fan base is different, so the segments we build with each club are unique to its supporters.
The play Recognise and protect. Birthday hospitality, early-release privileges, reduced-price access. Never discount; they do not need it.
How we work
No two clubs start in the same place, so no two engagements look the same. We shape the work around what your club needs, whether that is mapping out a new loyalty idea from scratch, retuning a scheme you already run, or anything in between. You do not need to know what data you hold before we start: finding that out together is part of the process.
It starts with a conversation and a workshop with your commercial team. Together we map what data sits across the club, from ticketing and the app to retail, and we tell you honestly what it can and cannot support before anything is scoped.
We agree a plan around what will move the needle for you. That could be a fan intelligence model, a new or improved loyalty scheme, better-targeted communications, or building capability within your own team.
We work hands-on with your people so the thinking sticks. Where tooling helps, whether a scoring model or a live view for your commercial team, it is built to fit how your club actually works.
We stay close as the seasons unfold, sitting with your commercial team to review what the data is telling you, what has changed, and what to act on next.
The founder
I’m Daniel Winfield, founder of Winfield & Co. My background is in retail loyalty, the discipline that first taught an entire industry to stop treating every customer the same.
I have worked on loyalty and customer analytics for some of the UK’s best-known retailers, helping them understand customers as individuals: sharpening personalisation, lifting incremental spend, and growing margin per customer rather than simply chasing volume. Winfield & Co brings that same rigour to football.
We work with a small number of clubs at a time, so you deal with me directly, not a junior team.
Questions clubs ask
Fan intelligence means bringing together the data a football club already collects, from ticketing, the club app, retail and food and beverage, to understand each supporter as an individual: how committed they are, what they value, and whether they are drifting away. It is the customer-understanding approach that loyalty schemes brought to retail, adapted for football.
Clubs at every level of the men’s and women’s game, from the National League to the Premier League. The approach scales to the size of your club and the data you have.
No. Many clubs are not sure exactly what data they hold or where it sits, and finding that out together is part of the process. If you have an in-house data team we work alongside them; if you do not, we do the heavy lifting.
Every club is different, so we never promise numbers before we have seen your data. The work is designed to reduce lapsing among supporters, increase spend per fan, make club communications more relevant, and give commercial partners a clearer picture of your audience.
The fan engagement workshop is currently free for our founding partner clubs. It always starts with a short call, so we understand your club and can make the session worthwhile.
We work to UK GDPR and handle fan data under a signed data-processing agreement. Your data is never shared or resold, and governance is agreed before any data changes hands.
Agencies tend to start with campaigns. We start with understanding the fan: which supporters matter most, why, and what each one needs. That way every campaign, offer and product decision is built on evidence, using thinking proven in retail loyalty.
The first step
A short, no-pressure call to understand where your club is and what you want to achieve. If it makes sense, we follow it with a fan engagement workshop for your commercial team: we bring the method, you bring your questions, and you leave with a clear read on what your data can do.
Rather just pick up the phone? Call Dan on 07309 690381
Your data stays yours. We work to UK GDPR, handle fan data under a signed data-processing agreement, and never share or resell it. Governance is scoped before any data changes hands.