Together in Electric Dreams

City enter a brave new world...

Welcome back readers and welcome to a brand new season of Hoopy hopefulness. 

Welcome to a new look matchday programme, our first try at digital and a brave new world for a man who has made or contributed to perhaps 5,000 printed editions over the last 25 years! It started when I became Communications Manager at Oxford United. At the end of my first day at the old Manor Ground the Club Secretary said ‘oh, and by the way, you’re the new programme editor’. I smiled, nodded, looked at the fixture list and saw a game four days away and then realised I had less than one clue how to make a programme. 

I managed it: the first ever game at the Kassam Stadium against Crystal Palace saw a 16 page programme and from there I grew it until it was at one stage 84 pages and winning multiple awards. Other clubs came knocking and over the years you’ll find my trademark poor grammer and punctuation; in matchday magazines from Wrexham to Wolverhampton, Braintree to Brighton. 

It was good while it lasted. But in the end, nobody was reading it. What’s the point in wasting words if nobody is listening? I can just go home and talk to my wife if I want that.

Football in its modern form is a different game if you are in the Premier League. There you can charge what you like and people will still buy a programme because you are getting a souvenir of an event. Think about it: if you to go Wembley people may moan but they still pay a tenner for a programme because one day in the future they will find it in the loft and say ‘ah, I was there’. 

In the lower leagues there is an element of that. We would sell more to Macclesfield fans today than home supporters because they want to mark a first visit to the ground. But sales would still only add up to less that 10% of the crowd. 10% at Wembley means 8,000 printed programmes. 10% here means 100… 

We tried to keep the printed edition going but rising print costs meant we could no longer justify production. Again, here’s an A level Maths example question. A programme costs £1.50 to print and you sell it for £3. If you print 100 how many do you need to sell to break even? And that doesn’t factor in the hours spent making it, or the sellers… 

So we have decided to go Digital. I’ve enjoyed learning how to do so and it will get smoother and better as we go along. THIS is the equivalent of the Crystal Palace programme quarter of a century ago. 

I’d like to thank the National League for letting us try this unconventional way of doing a programme (Yes, I did check!) and I’d like to thank everyone who provided feedback after a trial edition against Maidenhead. 184 people read that: more people than were at the game.

When I produced my first programme it was proof read by a gentleman called Ambrose Landon. I sent him this modern version for feedback. He rightly pointed out that 2001 to 2025 is NOT 25 years and I rolled back the years by ignoring  him completely. “It’ll be good once you get the hang of it” he said. “you almost got the hang of printed ones in the end. Just took a while...”