Charlton fans want open and honest dialogue

Thu Apr 9 2020

We launched CAST's annual Spring season ticket and attitudes survey on March 6th but we closed it again on March 10th when the first revelations about the extravagant expenditure at the club began to emerge. We took the view that this new information was likely to have such a profound effect on supporter attitudes to the new ownership that the findings of the survey would have little substance and credibility.

Nevertheless, in the five days of the survey being open, 532 supporters completed it. Although this is only about half of the sample we were aiming to achieve if the survey had run full term, we feel that it is nevertheless a sufficient number to underpin the findings of the survey question which asked:

From the list below what would be your three priorities for East Street Investments?

Of the 532 respondents:

  • 88% were male and 11% female
  • 63% were over 55; 25% were 35-55; 12% were under 35
  • 99% defined themselves as white
  • 48% were members of CAST; 52% were not

This was how they defined their top three priorities:

  • Open and honest dialogue between club owners and fans: 73%
  • Shared and sensible ambition for the club: 69%
  • Football club and assets under common ownership: 51%
  • Achieving Category One Academy status: 26%
  • Feeling proud to say you support Charlton Athletic: 25%
  • Filling The Valley: 21%
  • Making marquee signings: 12%
  • Including all parts of the community: 11%
  • A family-friendly match day experience: 10%

The three top priorities of (1) open and honest dialogue, (2) shared and sensible ambition and (3) football club and assets under shared ownership were consistently held across age groups and gender.

However, there were some notable differences across categories:

  • Those under 35 gave considerably higher priority to achieving Category One Academy status (40%) but much lower priority to a family-friendly match day experience (2%)
  • Women gave higher priority to open and honest dialogue (81%) and shared and sensible ambition (77%) but much lower priority to marquee signings (4%)
  •  Non CAST members gave lower priority to open and honest dialogue (68%) and club and assets under common ownership (47%) but higher to marquee signings (16%)