“We need to be smarter in our fixturing” – FV Interim CEO Dan Birrell on improving football’s accessibility and fan engagement

Security manages risk. Membership builds culture. Football Victoria’s greatest legacy won’t be another policy – it will be a connected football community that outlasts today’s administrators.

Every time crowd trouble makes headlines, football tends to reach for the same solutions: more police, more security, stronger sanctions and another statement condemning the behaviour.

But football membership could offer another layer of accountability by creating a stronger relationship between supporters, their clubs and the game.

The recent South Melbourne and Preston Lions fixture has once again placed supporter behaviour under the spotlight. The match finished 0-0, but the football was overshadowed by the actions of a small group of supporters. Football Victoria condemned the behaviour and launched an investigation, while Preston Lions also condemned the conduct and indicated it would cooperate with authorities.

Those responses are necessary. The overwhelming majority of supporters attend football to support their clubs and should be able to do so in a safe and welcoming environment.

But incidents such as this should force a bigger conversation. Instead of continually asking how we punish those responsible, perhaps we should be asking how we build a football environment where accountability is embedded into the relationship between the supporter, the club and the game.

England confronted this challenge more than three decades ago.

Following the dark era of football hooliganism throughout the 1970s and 1980s, English football underwent a fundamental transformation. All-seater stadiums, CCTV, intelligence-led policing, professional stewarding and Football Banning Orders all played important roles in changing the match day environment.

But one principle sits underneath many of those reforms: knowing who your supporters are.

Football became less anonymous, and accountability became more achievable.

Football Membership Makes Accountability Possible

A membership card alone will never eradicate hooliganism. England did not solve football violence simply by introducing membership; it built an integrated system of policing, stadium management, intelligence, sanctions and supporter engagement.

Football membership can, however, strengthen that system.

When someone becomes a member, they are no longer simply an anonymous person purchasing a ticket. They have a relationship with the club. In Australia, that relationship can be even stronger because club memberships commonly provide prepaid match admission and voting rights.

That creates both privileges and responsibilities.

If a member repeatedly breaches a club’s code of conduct, there should be meaningful consequences beyond being removed from one match. Membership can be suspended, voting rights revoked and access to tickets, digital services and other member benefits restricted where appropriate.

The objective isn’t to punish supporters collectively. It is to give clubs and governing bodies the tools to identify, manage and sanction individuals while protecting the overwhelming majority who simply want to support their team.

Membership doesn’t replace policing. It strengthens accountability.

Australian Football Already Has the Foundation

Australian football does not need to start from scratch.

Our existing club membership structures already provide a direct relationship between supporter and club. Members can have voting rights, prepaid gate admission and a formal stake in the organisation they support.

The problem is that the relationship often ends at the turnstile.

Football Victoria has an opportunity to take that existing foundation and build something much bigger: a connected football membership ecosystem across Victorian football.

Imagine every supporter receiving a Football Victoria Membership ID linked to their club membership, ticket purchases, attendance, volunteer history, coaching and referee accreditation, junior participation and other interactions with the game.

That identity could become the gateway to the entire football experience.

One Membership. One Platform. One Football Community.

A centrally managed digital platform could provide members with access to live-streamed matches, club news, fixtures, results, exclusive content, merchandise, hospitality, voting, community programs and other services.

For clubs, it would create a direct and trusted relationship with their supporters.

For Football Victoria, it would create a statewide football network. For supporters, football membership becomes more than an annual transaction; it becomes their digital identity within the game.

This is where the proposal moves beyond supporter behaviour and into commercial sustainability.

Football Membership Is a Commercial Asset

The biggest misconception in Australian football is that membership is simply a marketing product.

It is not.

Football membership can become one of the game’s greatest commercial assets.

Every club talks about attracting sponsors, but sponsors increasingly want more than a logo on a shirt or perimeter board. They want access to audiences, measurable engagement and data.

A club with a strong membership base can demonstrate a genuine, identifiable community. It can communicate directly with supporters, promote merchandise and hospitality, measure engagement and provide sponsors with a more compelling proposition.

Now scale that across Victorian football.

Club websites, live streams, fixture pages, newsletters, digital memberships and content platforms collectively become a significant commercial inventory.

Football Victoria could develop statewide commercial partnerships across that network while allowing clubs to maintain their existing local relationships.

Every live stream, digital banner, fixture page, newsletter and member portal becomes valuable commercial inventory.

Revenue generated through that central digital ecosystem should be transparently redistributed across the game.

Football Victoria generates new commercial income. Participating clubs receive a share based on an agreed model that could consider active memberships, digital engagement, live-stream audiences and commercial performance.

That changes the economics.

Clubs are no longer operating entirely as individual commercial islands. They become part of a larger football marketplace where growth in membership and engagement creates value for the entire game.

Building Football’s Digital Infrastructure

The opportunity isn’t simply another membership database.

It is football infrastructure.

Imagine a single platform connecting club memberships, voting rights, match admission, live streaming, club news, supporter communications, merchandise and participation across the state.

It could also give Football Victoria a much clearer picture of the football community.

Not just registered players, but members, supporters, volunteers, coaches, referees and families actively engaged with clubs.

That data matters.

When football is competing for facilities, funding and political attention, credible evidence of community demand is far more powerful than assumptions or isolated attendance figures.

A connected football membership system could give policymakers a clearer understanding of the people behind the game and the scale of the community being served.

The South Melbourne–Preston Fixture Should Be a Catalyst

The recent fixture should not simply become another disciplinary matter that disappears once sanctions are handed down.

It should prompt a broader examination of whether Victorian football has the systems required to create stronger supporter accountability.

There is a legitimate place for security, policing, stewarding and sanctions. But these should sit within a broader framework that connects clubs with their members and gives supporters a genuine stake in the culture they help create.

The goal should not be to turn football into a sterile environment. Passion is one of the game’s greatest assets.

The goal is to protect passionate support while making it increasingly difficult for a small minority to hijack the experience for everyone else.

Football membership can be part of that solution.

A Legacy Beyond Today’s Administrators

Football administrators often ask themselves how they will be remembered.

Will it be another strategic plan? Another governance review? Another infrastructure announcement?

Those achievements matter, but systems create legacies.

The administrators who transformed English football are not remembered simply because they installed CCTV or introduced stronger sanctions. They are remembered because they helped fundamentally change how football operated.

Football Victoria has the same opportunity.

Imagine being the administration that built Australia’s first integrated football membership ecosystem: one that strengthens supporter accountability, creates recurring commercial opportunities for clubs, provides government with credible participation data, increases sponsorship value and connects supporters with their clubs through one trusted platform.

That is a legacy.

Football doesn’t need another reactive policy after the next crowd incident. It needs infrastructure—not just concrete and steel, but digital, commercial and community infrastructure capable of supporting the game for decades.

Because the greatest asset in football isn’t the grandstand, the sponsor or even the competition.

It is the people who choose to belong.

If Victorian football has the courage to transform football membership from a ticketing product into the foundation of accountability, community and commercial growth, it can do more than respond to the next incident.

It can change the way football is experienced, governed and commercially sustained for generations.

History shows us that football doesn’t change after one incident.

It changes when leaders have the courage to build systems that make the next one less likely to happen.