Mike Amos edited the fantastic fanzine Northern Ventures, Northern Gains for 27 years chronicling dog raffles, Kevin Keegan eating pie and peas, the death of a spongeman and 80p burgers the size of a tea plate in the Northern league. All of that was in one issue and all of this while reporting for the Northern Echo and becoming chairman of the league.

In his fantastic autobiography “Unconsidered Trifles” (I urge you to buy it here https://mikeamosblog.wordpress.com/autobiography/ ) he tells the majestic story of copytakers, bored with the latest piece being phoned in about the goings on at the magistrate’s court muttering “Is there much more of this” down the line to our excited reporter.

It’s a nice variant on “Is that the programme mate” and perhaps a good way of describing fanzine production today, we are a long way from the days of 1,500+ fanzines and 15,000 circulation numbers.

Kids today!

John Pearman is the oldest editor of a print fanzine still running, an incredible achievement and even after 30 years his Liverpool Fanzine, Red All Over the Land is still asking the right questions. He recently ran a couple of articles entitled Have Fanzines Got a Future? John highlighted the difficulty in predicting the buying behaviour of crowds in today’s game, “The fans who come to a Legends game are a totally different animal to those that turn up at a Premier league game” but he recognises there is a market “if you drop down the leagues then fanzines do seem to have a future…they have a laugh and have heroes and villains none of us in the Premier League have ever heard of”  This is an important point about quality and content that we will come back to. It’s an important question and so I’ve jotted down a few of my own thoughts

Distribution Issues?

Sportspages has long gone as print popularity has declined and gone are the days that Jumbo records in Leeds used to run the fantastically named “Readers Lives” top 20 fanzine chart in the 1990s. 9 of the 20 places are taken by football fanzines based on in store sales. Classic poor fanzine print quality so I’ve reproduced it, look at those prices and how the HELL did two Man United and a Swansea fanzine appear in the top 20 fanzine chart in Leeds?!

Local record stores and indie shops will still stock fanzines if asked and many libraries have started zine libraries, time for a revival?

Attracting subscribers is getting harder and the constant price rises and service reduction for mailing are becoming prohibitive. David Collins of the classic Welsh Football addressed this very well in a blog this week. “The huge rise in Royal Mail postage costs, together with a reduction in service and reliability, present a real challenge to subscription print magazines. It’s not an existential threat, yet, but definitely a factor affecting pricing and customer perceptions of our service.” He also mentions covid and its effects. I do know a few fanzines failed due to not being able to physically sell copies at the time but David saw the opposite. “the pandemic – initially perceived as a threat when football shut down and bookshops were closed – brought a surge in demand for subscriptions. It turned out the arrival of a magazine in the post was a reassuring little bit of normality in dark days.”

You can and should read more from David here, it’s a great article https://www.weltchmedia.com/post/blog-post-print-is-not-dead-but

Bagging subscriptions is obviously key for print today but that comment about normality…standing outside the ground explaining to people that “No, it’s not the programme mate” is still a fruitful way of selling fanzines if you can get enough help to sell and the weather is kind of course.

Many clubs don’t even run a programme any longer (Bradford City, Bristol city and Salford are some examples I know of) so there is perhaps space for fanzines to flourish. There were actually a few “alternative programme” fanzines back in the day, Home Alone at West Ham and Cheery Os at Orient for example. Surely with the increasing rate of demise of programmes there is a space for fanzines to take over, maybe club shops can come to fanzines aid here despite years of club resistance to their presence?

Competition has increased and morphed.

In the 90s it was the internet and forums that led to a big decline in fanzine numbers. Now it’s social media and ubiquitous podcasts that are hindering progress. It’s also been pointed out to me that modern football fans seem to have little interest in football “culture” beyond the next meme and those bloody half and half scarves.

Times change, I’m not being an old grump here because Scotland’s recent qualification for the world cup via THAT game brought out the best in social media. But still, concentrate for more than a few seconds will you?

The problem I see with digital forms is the lack of context, quality and patience (plus idiotic trolls). So could fanzines find and fill a niche? Digital forms are bite sized chunks in people’s ears 24/7 so as an alternative quality is crucial for print fanzines, that takes time and effort to develop of course.

I’ve also heard it said in many places that “young people don’t want print”  but ironically there are many local fanzine workshops, Zine-0-philia in Leeds for example (https://www.instagram.com/zineophilialeeds/). These meets are filled with that young audience, creating their own content. Zine stands have popped up in a few cafes and friendly spaces around various cities so there are people out there craving niche printed formats.

The irony is that part of the reason people started fanzines was because they saw traditional print media as irrelevant and out of date. That part of the protest movement has belatedly worked; printed media is now perceived to be irrelevant in the digital age!

Are there still things to protest about?  

HELL YES. The 36th anniversary of Hillsborough has passed and, disgracefully, the Hillsborough Law has not yet passed into the statue books.  Worse still, a “Labour” government are back tracking, the idea of a legal duty of candour placed on public authorities (let’s say it, the police) seems to be being watered down again before passing into law. Fanzines and the protest culture blossomed and expanded quickly during the horrific tragedies of the late 80s, surely that wasn’t all for nought.

It was great to see Manchester United fans on their sit-down protest and Sheffield Wednesday fans boycotting matches to force Chansiri out. The Football Supporters Association (FSA) are very active with the fight against many many things…but it always seems that people are waiting for someone else to start the ball rolling.  People seek strength in numbers, perhaps a result of the draconian laws the recent “government” introduced over the past 14 years (We see you not repealing that law Labour, we see you). Let’s see what the independent football regulator legislation brings but fanzines did and still can play that role in keeping people honest. Protest is always stronger from the bottom up.

Money money money

Fanzines never made anyone rich, but they set many people on the road to it. In other blogs we’ve looked at James Brown, Irvine Welsh and Pete Doherty amongst many. On a smaller scale, fanzines took local ads to support small businesses and with the problems on the high street today that shouldn’t be sniffed at, it’s hardly an arms dealer you’re supporting.

Fanzines used to sponsor players kit, this example from issue 4 of Birmingham City’s Penguin in 1997 being a classic of the genre.

A new model involving local activism and supporting local causes is working. Take a look at Give ‘em Beans (Barrow FC) and Trevor Francis Tracksuits (Nottingham Forest) and the Old Dead Tree (Salford FC) who all exist to be a classic fanzine (and they do it superbly) and raise money for the less fortunate in their area (again, wonderful work fellas).

Plus, many of the older (Legacy is the word people use nowadays) fanzines have adapted and thrived with their brilliant model of satire, news and protest. Then there are multimedia mixes like The Square Ball and A Love Supreme..there is surely room for more to develop.

The demise of programmes is purely down to parsimony at clubs. If they aren’t making a lot of money on something nowadays, they simply cut it as other costs have increased. This is sad as there are many quality programmes still around, particularly in non-league with @Footieprint doing a brilliant job producing high quality, affordable print.

New Kids On The Block

There is growth, there is hope. The WSL era has seen three new print fanzines dedicated to Women’s football. The first was The Barmy Article at Manchester United, then Chelsea came through with the Kingsmeadow Chronicle and now the venerable Arsenal fanzine, The Gooner has launched a print edition dedicate to Arsenal women.

Perhaps more surprisingly there have been 3 new print fanzines for the men’s game in the past 15 months at Sheffield Wednesday, Oldham and Worthing FC. Everywhere and Nowhere, Beyond The Boundary (Park Alert System)” and Rebel Rebels are a very welcome breath of fresh air. The mixture of reasons for them starting up is fanzine culture writ large.

Peter Holmes at E&N is an old hand, having edited the classic A View From the East Bank. Decades on he has restarted during the lowest point of the Chansiri years. “In the end I, like many others, was just sick of it all and it got me to thinking that we need some (any sort of) positivity to lift the general mood amongst the fans” So he started E&N…protest and positivity.

Pete Mason is another old hand, formerly editing the superlative “Beyond The Boundary and has returned with BTBPAS for altogether different reasons “I was asked if I wanted to contribute to it by Matt who runs the podcast and Youtube phone in. The idea was to get word out about the podcast etc. Matt also wanted my permission to use the name.”  A print fanzine SUPPORTING digital media. Cor Blimey!! 

Sam Virgoe at RR just felt the need to right a wrong. His previous attempt at a Worthing fanzine fell foul of covid, too young to have built a readership base when lockdown hit. Rebel Rebel like so many who have gone before is“our love letter and our battle cry rolled into one. Stories from the stands, memories drenched in beer, Bovril and heartbreak, and all the chaos, comedy and character that makes non-league the best football in the world. No nonsense.” Beautiful.

The Vinyl Whistle

Fanzines were about not being kept in your place, a sense of history, protest, a sense of community and perhaps most of all a sense fun. All of these things are still needed, ever more so you could argue and that impetus is still being provided by the superb people out there producing football fanzine content.

There are still 75 football fanzines in print on the British Isles with more online, OK that’s way down in number but for all the reasons listed above that’s no surprise and the same for all print media. For sure people don’t buy any print items in the numbers they used to but fanzines were always quite niche. Is the key that people will still buy print if they feel they’re getting quality, valued content compared to vapid digital content? All the fanzines still around provide this in abundance. As Barney at Red News said just today “We’re not a brand + certainly not influencers. 😄 We’re a fanzine.”

So, is there much more of this? Well, I’m an optimist by nature and I say yes. If you have any other thoughts, we’d be pleased to hear them either in the comments below or at fanzinefc@gmail.com