Fan Advisory Board website launch & December meeting

We absolutely agree with this and already made changes for the December meeting. The intention is to continue to have a circular table, as opposed to a long rectangle, with a mixed seating arrangement to make sure we are more collaborative for all future meetings.

Working on our current 6/7 week rolling meeting schedule, the following meeting dates were agreed with the FAB:

Meeting 1 - Tuesday 13th January.

Meeting 2 – Tuesday 3rd March.

Thanks for the suggestion and a good idea. This is included in the agenda moving forward, starting with the December meeting.

Thanks for the feedback and suggestion, the Club is happy to follow this process.

Any Supporter Representative appointed to represent a Nominated Supporters Group will be appointed for a term of 2 (two) years from the date of their respective appointment. 

Any Supporters Representative appointed as an Independent Supporter will be appointed for a term of 3 (three) years from the date of their respective appointment.

Appointed Supporter Representatives may be re-appointed for one additional term (i.e. 4 (four) years in total for Nominated Supporters Group Representatives and 6 (six) years in total for Independent Supporter Representatives). 

The above on the term lengths and maximum number of consecutive terms allowed are outlined in the Terms of Reference.

The EDI groups currently represented on the FAB are Punjabi Villans and Villa Bellas, at the end of the maximum term length for these groups, other fan groups under the Fans for Diversity umbrella will be invited to apply for a seat on the FAB. The Fans for Diversity groups will then be able to elect the groups (and the nominated person from the respective group) they wish to represent them for the next term. There will always be two seats on the FAB for Fans For Diversity Groups. 

The Lions Clubs and AVST each have a permanent seat on the FAB and will be able to nominate their representative at the end of each representative's maximum term time (or sooner should the individual wish to step-down at the end of any particular term). Our preference would be for current members at the end of each term to give 90 days notice of whether they intend to stay on the FAB or not up until the maximum length of service permitted.  

Yes, we will schedule the initial meetings as requested following the December FAB meeting. 

The staff members who will lead on each group are as follows: Ticketing (Chris Hornbuckle & Dan Walker), Fan Engagement (Tommy Jordan & Matt Dainty), Accessibility (Laura Wright), Culture (Sam Ghataora), Women (Maggie Murphy & Emily Peacock), Young FAB (Anthony Richards & Ashlee Milliard). 

The Club has a database of applicants from the original FAB who made the longer shortlist, and therefore we recommend we revisit that in the first instance, especially as during the application process many expressed interest in specific areas relevant to the extended network groups. 

The Club SLO now also has a greater knowledge of individuals within the fanbase who he believes would be positive additions to particular groups because of their background and skill sets.

Having discussed in the meeting, the Club and FAB agreed to take a pragmatic approach in which any member of a Working Group must be approved by both Club and FAB, and that term lengths depend on the situation - again, agreed by both sides.

Following the recent meeting with the Head of Safeguarding we can confirm that we currently have 18 qualifying applicants from the original FAB application process who meet the criteria for the Junior FAB. 

The next stage involved developing and publishing an advert to invite additional applications. This targeted applicants from the original process who were not keen on joining the main FAB but may be interested in the Junior FAB, as well as other supporters aged 14–21 who may wish to get involved. The FAB will note that the advert is now live and we have received a positive number of applications in the first few days. Our plan is for the advert to stay open until mid-December, and then to begin the selection process.

We are more than happy to continue to meet to discuss how the club can support on assisting with the launch and promotion of the new FAB website and social channels. We could utilise AVFC Support to assist as well as look to include in the matchday programme and marketing email/newsletter.

The Club takes the integrity of our heritage assets extremely seriously and there is no intention to change our traditional home colours of claret and blue. There will naturally always be flexibility to change the colours of the away and third kit, but we assume this is something that is well understood by the FAB and wider fanbase.

In terms of the design process, the club takes input from ownership, the football staff, the business staff and of course our kit manufacturer. The club is very satisfied with kit sales in recent seasons, with record shirt sales recorded last year and a strong start to the 25/26 season..

As a next step, the Club will provide the FAB with a list of potential FAB Ambassadors from which the FAB ultimately select.

The ambassador(s) would be invited to attend meetings, could potentially attend matchday clinics, they could contribute to programme articles and video content to help with the promotion of the FAB and its public image. They could also be present at any fan forum-type events.  

Both sides agree that it makes the most sense to begin this in early 2026. 

The Holte Pub seems an obvious first location for this as it is a warm, dry space. The Club need to check that this space can be made available for the FAB to use and will get back to the FAB once that is established. 

As mentioned in the last FAB, we're in the process of changing our third party supplier for membership - they've now been notified of termination but this doesn't happen until end of May 2026. This is a major contributing factor to the delay in the membership packs being delivered and we're working hard to resolve this delay. 

We're expecting some gifts will be going out in early December, subject to the third party completing the fulfilment and more gifts are on order. Communications are also planned which will update members on the status and timeline for member packs delivery.

We agree that the kick-off time for the game is challenging - it is very unusual for a British team to be allocated an early kick-off, and we agree that this is the major contributing factor to the ticket sales. It is worth noting that our sales rate for this game is similar to other UK teams who have been allocated an early kick-off in European competition. 

Having said that, we've obviously increased our marketing communications around this game in an effort to drive further sales, and will continue with additional promotion in the lead up to the game as we will look to drive sales as much as possible before kick off.

With reference to ticket bundles, these were sold as non transferable and non refundable as it is difficult to change details of seats bought in packages in our ticketing system. As with everything, we do always consider any extenuating circumstances and will move people on a case by case basis. If the FAB is aware of any specific cases, we ask that they share the relevant details with the Club for consideration.

In response to feedback provided by the FAB both before and during the meeting, the Club can confirm that this remains an active ongoing priority to support those fans encountering problems entering the ground - whilst we are confident that many fans enter the ground smoothly, we do acknowledge there are issues in some cases.

The Club has been working on a solution for the main issue - namely the need to log in and out to see tickets in the app in order to then be able to scan at the turnstile - and are working to have this fixed by the home game against Manchester United.

The Club also commits to include a question in the post-match survey to gain further insights on fan experience entering the ground.

Firstly, the Club would like to thank the FAB for the transparency it has shown in terms of communicating the FAB's intention to support the campaign. The Club respects the FAB's right to participate in any campaign and notes the requests raised.

As a general update, the Club will shortly begin the complicated task of setting pricing for next season. This is a process that takes time and requires detailed planning of all revenue and cost across the Club. We will also monitor developments in the wider football and sports industry as part of this work. 

As a result of the fact that work is yet to begin on next season, in the immediate term the Club has no specific comment, but the Club commits to full dialogue with the FAB at a later date, and before the pricing for next season is finalised. The Club would like the FAB to note that there has been significant investment in fan experience over the past seasons and those improvements will continue with the North Stand works.

Lastly, if the opportunity presents itself and works for both sides, the Club would naturally be open to joint communication with the FAB at a later date.

The new phone system will be implemented from 1st December. Once we are through the initial implementation and have adequate data this will be made available to the Ticketing Working Group in an appropriate format and we welcome any constructive feedback that will support us in providing an improved service for supporters.

We are happy to help and comments and suggestions for slight tweaks to some of the survey questions have already been provided by the Club. This will help make the data insights collected more actionable and compatible with similar surveys run by the club.

Could the FAB please outline how they are looking to distribute this survey and when would you like it to go out? The Club may be able to incorporate some of the new questions into our own surveys and share the findings with the FAB.

The majority of the functionality in the app is working as expected, however we did discuss an improved functionality linked to in app payments and refunds. Whilst we were hopeful this updated functionality would be available by the end of the year, our software provider has now informed us they expect to complete the work in early 2026. We'll keep the FAB updated as to progress over the coming weeks.

As agreed, the club will look to release selling criteria for the group stages of European competition earlier. Once the draw has been made and allocations have been confirmed we will look to release the criteria. The only caveat to this would be if there are any high risk fixtures which need to be handled differently, but we will aim to inform both the FAB and the wider fanbase were this to be the case.

At this stage we don't believe there are any constraints and look forward to receiving the proposal from the FAB for review. 

The club can confirm this is now in effect and the FAB will note that for upcoming games the form has not been requested. 

The only exception is that we have agreed to continue this with our travelling disabled supporters and will manage this process directly with those fans.

The process of identifying resale tickets is still a very manual one and we are aware of various resale sites that sell tickets, both as a club and as a wider group of Premier League teams. 

Efforts are made to share the data of known touts and resellers between clubs and these accounts are blocked and tickets cancelled. 

The Club would appreciate the help of the FAB alerting the club to any ticket resellers or tickets for resale that they find so we can take steps to invalidate tickets and report the sites to the Premier League.

In terms of concrete action the FAB can take, should the FAB notice any resale sites offering tickets, please share those with the Club via the Ticketing Working Group and the Club will proceed from this point. Whilst we appreciate that the FAB may wish to help directly, the Club politely asks that the FAB does not engage in any action itself, for example by attempting to buy a ticket or reaching out to the reseller.