Don't Forget Your Tickets
Don' Forget Your Tickets is a podcast devoted to the unsung heroes of the spectator sports and events industries, the Ticketing Managers. We explore who they are, their well-guarded industry secrets, and how they entered the field. Beyond that, we delve into a broader ticketing realm, inviting experts from various fields to share their insights and stories. Our primary aim is to add value and highlight deserving individuals.
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Don't Forget Your Tickets
David Kynaston (interviewed by Greig Box Turnbull) on Life Long Loyalty to Small Town Football Clubs - A Live Special from Emirates Stadium in London
What Keeps Fans Loyal to Their Club for a Lifetime?
Football is more than just a game—it’s identity, community, and lifelong devotion. Few understand this better than esteemed historian and lifelong Aldershot Town supporter, David Kynaston, who joins Greig Box Turnbull on stage at Emirates Stadium to explore the deep emotional bonds fans have with their clubs.
From attending his first Aldershot Town match in 1959 to documenting the club’s 2016-17 season in Shots in the Dark, David shares his journey as a devoted fan. Alongside Greig, former managing director of Oxford United FC, this episode delves into the nostalgia, passion, and unwavering loyalty that define the connection between supporters and their teams—especially in smaller footballing communities.
David and Greig also discuss the evolving fan experience in today’s digital world. Does physically attending matches offer something deeper than following a club online? How can clubs balance tradition—home grounds, team colours, and local identity—with commercial realities?
The conversation also highlights the human touch in football business and how clubs can foster genuine loyalty across generations by prioritising warmth, authenticity, and connection.
This Live Special episode of Don't Forget Your Tickets was recorded at the Don't Forget Your Tickets conference at Emirates Stadium, January 23rd 2025, as the fourth out of 12 on-stage interviews that day. David Kynaston was interviewed by Greig Box Turnbull.
Don't Forget Your Tickets is powered by TicketCo and hosted by TicketCo’s CEO, Carl-Erik Michalsen Moberg. The podcast was originally named TicketingPodcast.com
What does it mean to be a fan for life? What began as an article titled by the agony of an Aldershot fan in the Observer in 1966, written when he was still a schoolboy, came full circle 54 years later with the release of the book Shots in the Dark. The release of the book Shots in the Dark. The common thread in both is, of course, aldershot Town National League side and their devoted supporter, the esteemed English historian David Kinaston. At the Don't Forget your Tickets conference at Emirates Stadium on January 23rd, we brought together David Kinaston and Greg Bogsternbel. We brought together David Kynaston and Greg Bogsternbel, former managing director of Oxford United FC and current non-executive director of Oxford City FC, for a discussion on lifelong loyalty to small town football clubs. Sit back and enjoy the conversation.
Speaker 2:Hi everybody, great to be here. Having had a couple of teams calls with David, I must say I'm quite excited to help share his story with you guys. I think it provides an alternative to the sort of agenda today. We're hearing from a lot of sort of sports professionals, so it's nice to have a football fan articulate their experience of the game. So David will explain. But he's actually the author of a book, shots in the Dark, which is his personal journey of following Aldershot Town Football Club, and it's in one season in particular and I've got a little affinity to Aldershot. My first job in journalism was the Aldershot News and our newsroom actually looked out onto the recreation ground. So when I was reading this book it did bring back a lot of memories for me, david, and as an Oxford United fan myself, I understand the topic that we're talking about today lifelong loyalty to small town clubs, which I think a lot of us, if we support some of the smaller clubs have questioned from time to time. So, david, please welcome. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 3:Thank you, greg. Yeah, well, I think I'm the oldest person in the room. It's come to. This comes to all of us at some point. So about myself I left university just over 50 years ago and I've essentially been a self-employed professional historian ever since.
Speaker 3:I've written about three main subjects really the city of London, the financial city I wrote a four-volume history of the city through the 19th and 20th centuries various institutional histories. Most recently I wrote a history of the Bank of England, commissioned by the bank. So as that, I'm currently engaged and have been for the most part of the last 20 years or so on a multi-volume history of post-war Britain, in other words post-1945, and have currently reached the mid-1960s. It's very much a social history, a cultural history, with politics there and economics there, but it's kind of more history from below, using letters, diaries and so on and trying to recreate a sense of what it would have been like to live in the British and of that era. And lastly, as well as being keen on football, I'm also a cricket nut and I've written or co-written five books on different aspects of cricket history. Shots in the Dark is my first and so far only book on football and it follows the team.
Speaker 3:I support Aldershot Town through the 2016-17 season and I chose to do it then, I think largely because of a coincidence, which was that July, the 30th 2016, was my 65th birthday. Obviously, at that point of the year, it's just before the start of a new season, but it was also the 50th anniversary to the day of England winning the World Cup. Rather conveniently, they won it on my 15th birthday, which I've always felt absurdly proud about, and my children are still rather irritated about. But I hope in the fullness of time, even if not on their birthday, they'll get to see England win the World Cup again. So I just thought, yeah, a football diary. It's also about what was going on in the world at large. The Brexit voter just happened, trump was about to be voted for the first time as US president, something that, in my diary, doesn't give me a huge amount of pleasure and it's also elements of autobiography, including about supporting the shots. So that's really where I'm coming from.
Speaker 2:Thank you, david. I believe you went to your first Aldershot Town match as a seven and a half year old, going to give your age away here in 1959. Do you still remember that day?
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, I remember the score. It was Easter Monday, 1959. The shots were at home to Gillingham, a 4-2 home win. Very lucky, because actually the shots I didn't realise at the time. But looking back on it, looking at the stats going back, the shots were actually in a pretty grim run of form, particularly at home in fact. So it was a rare home win and indeed the shots had to apply for re-election at the end of the season, the rather quaint system in the old days with the old Division Four equivalents of League Two. Now there wasn't automatic relegation, there was this thing called re-election, which was really kind of old boys club, old pals club voting for each other. So usually clubs did stay in, even if they finished in the bottom four.
Speaker 3:My main memory from early matches was of being awestruck by how high and far the goalkeepers kicked the ball. They didn't play out from the back in those days. It was all up the field as high and as far as you could make it, and I just couldn't believe as a small boy that they could kick it that far and that high and I loved that, and I mean. My other main memory from those very early times is that sometime after that first match I got out a bit of paper and wrote three names on it. One was Aldershot, one was Manchester United and the other was Tottenham Hotspur.
Speaker 3:I think Manchester United because it wasn't that long after the Munich disaster and you know there was a huge sort of emotional surge towards United at that time. Obviously, tottenham Hotspur, I think I, just as a boy, I loved the name. It seemed so romantic, so glamorous. Anyway, I looked at these three names, these three clubs Aldershot, Manchester United, tottenham Hotspur and solemnly decided which was I going to support? And I didn't realise the long-term implications, I have to say, when I decided, yeah, aldershot, they're the club I'd seen. They actually were only about eight or ten miles from where I was living. So Aldershot it was, and one makes these decisions at a very tender age but have very long-lasting effects.
Speaker 2:Do you think actually having attended the matches and living in that area made the big difference?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think once one's gone for that first time, I think you know, once your father takes you to your first match, it does stack the odds surely heavily in favour, perhaps particularly if your team has won. But you know, some affinity is there from the start, I guess. So you know, maybe even despite the allure of those two other names, it was always going to be the shots given. I'd been taken that first time.
Speaker 2:So fathers have a real responsibility in these matters what do you think it is that resonates with children so strongly, that makes them get that lifelong loyalty from that very young age?
Speaker 3:You're seven and a half years old and something connected you.
Speaker 3:No, it's a good question. I think it's because a child aged, say, seven, eight, nine, something like that, is just starting to get a sense of the world at large. Just starting Might not know the name of the prime minister or anything like that, but some sense of the world at large, some sense beyond their family and immediate environment, and starting to get some sense of identity, who they are as a distinct individual. And I think choosing who to support and then sticking to that is part of what turns out then to be a lifelong journey in which it seems to me identity is somewhere near the crux of the whole thing. And we can talk a little bit more about identity perhaps later on. But I would just say this Every time I go to an order shop match, I try to get to at least half two thirds of the home matches each season.
Speaker 3:It's still the same ground and as I go through the very old fashioned turnstiles and facial recognition ticketing seems a long way off. I would have still sent you an analogue club. As I go through the turnstiles and there's a bit of a slope up to the actual pitch and there's a bit of a slope up to the actual pitch, I take inordinate satisfaction from the fact this is the ground where I first came to in 1959. And through all the ups and downs of life we all have our ups and downs, obviously, but this has been a constant in my life and I feel actually very fortunate to have that.
Speaker 3:I think one's sense of identity is just so important and you know, for most football supporters, lifelong fans, whether big clubs or small clubs it's pretty crucial actually, and particularly, I feel, actually in the modern world, the modern kind of less solid, more electronic, more instant world, no longer jobs for life. We're in a different society now. It used to be jobs for life. It's a much more fluid society, much less loyalty and trust between employers and employees than in the old paternalistic days. And it's not all bad, the end of paternalism, but it's a very different world. I think having a sort of rock solid aspect to one's identity in terms of one's psychological health and stability actually even matter more than they did, I think I would argue.
Speaker 2:Do you think that's interesting? With how football has evolved and obviously there's a massive global audience now and television rights et cetera, and people can watch games on their phone and things Do you think having actually gone to the ground and experienced it firsthand gave you a much stronger connection and sense of identity? Perhaps people are now building identities and affinities with football clubs in different ways?
Speaker 3:In a slightly more remote and less physical way, I guess I mean what one shouldn't forget and one or two of you might just about remember, but in terms of one's access to watching football on television, when I was a boy growing up, there was virtually no football on television apart from the Cup Final. The Cup Final was a great occasion, a great national occasion, but I mean you sometimes got the audience in the international, but Match of the Day didn't start from 1964. The ITV equivalent, you know, a big match and all that soon afterwards there was very little football on television for a long, long time and no, literally no live league football. So you had to be there to kind of experience it. And again, I think, in a way that's quite good, because there's nothing like the real thing, you know, actual being there, the physical presence. There's an authenticity about it that it lacks in any other form, I think I would argue.
Speaker 2:Looking a bit closer at the topic of the conversation lifelong loyalty to small clubs. When you tell people who you support, do they ever ask you who you're? Yeah, but have you got premier league team?
Speaker 3:well, do I have a second team? Do people ask you that? They occasionally do? Yeah, actually, my answer to that would be for what it's worth. In the old days I actually was man city because I. There was something sort of tragic comic at times about man city in the old days. Things would never quite work out but I had a sort of soft spot for them. I liked the team very much in the Bell Somerby era, rodney Marsh as well. But yeah, one's got to be one team or the other. We've been at home watching recently, re-watching Gavin and Stacey in the light of the Christmas special, and there's that moment where Dave coaches on the one hand, smithy on the other, are at loggerheads about the little boy and what his team's going to be, and at one point, well, he could support Cardiff and West Ham. And then all the men look absolutely no, you can't support two teams. And there's an eternal truth there.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of people that work in football clubs in the audience and I guess you know they really appreciate the loyalty of their fan base and I guess alongside that, are always looking at ways to bring in new generations and get that same level of loyalty. What do you think the key components are perhaps for the people working in the in the profession to think about? What could they learn from your experience as somebody that's followed a club intimately for so long?
Speaker 3:yeah, I mean I'm not sure I can say anything particularly novel, but I mean I suppose it's two things. Perhaps, of course, football ultimately doesn't matter. Suppose it's two things. Perhaps, of course football ultimately doesn't matter. Ultimately it's a game, it's a sport. Actually, it really does matter in people's lives and one shouldn't underestimate that and not kind of play around with people's emotions. You know, I mean, for me what really matters is the football is played at the ground where it's always been and the shirts are more. Or the football is played at the ground where it's always been and the shirts are more or less the same colours, the same strip. They've always been. Players come and go, managers come and go, but the ground and the strip, the colours are the perennials. I'm also rather sorry for the supporters who have thought of our own clubs have changed grounds and I would hate the thought of that. I guess people do get used to it be interesting to hear about their experiences, but I always hate the thought of that. So I think, never forgetting that it really matters. And also something intangible. The other thing and it's a difficult word to use, but it's something to do with the soul of football, the soul of the sport Hunter Davis in his wonderful book very pioneering book in the early 70s, about following Tottenham Hotspur for a season.
Speaker 3:The book is called the Glory Game and ultimately there's something romantic about it. So it's not just bottom line considerations. And I think they've rode back a bit now with that story a few weeks ago about United suddenly jacking up mid-season prices and also that they were going to reduce the number of seats available for season ticket holders because more kind of one-day tourists coming from abroad and so on, in particular old travellers or destination venue would spend more on the day on merchandise and whatnot and that seemed to be awful and was just really a travesty of the soul of a great club actually. So those would be my two points, you know. But it is ultimately about something more than the bottom line and it's to do with community and it's to do with central importance in people's lives, communication between different generations and continuity and a sense of history and that one is just in the present moment a custodian for something that then links the past and the future.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of interesting points there. You touched on not leaving the ground and I sense that's because you've got such an affinity of the rec. But of course we're in a stadium now that is Arsenal's, you know, second home as it were. And as I walked up from the tube this morning you could see the signage there showing back to the previous stadium and the heritage of the club etc. So sometimes clubs have to move to new stadiums. The other stadiums might have got. Certainly the club I follow the stadium got very out of date, didn't qualify for the Taylor Report, etc. So I guess in the event of that happening you'd say it's important that the heritage and the history there's fine ways to incorporate that.
Speaker 3:I mean, I think that's right and there will be good reasons and, you know, unanswerable arguments at times where clubs do need to move, and almost half, well, obviously the composition of 92 keeps changing. But getting on for half of the 92, I suspect now I mean 40 odd, I think, is the figure in the last what would it be? 20 to 25 years, something like that, 30 years perhaps have moved. You know, I'm grateful that well, my club's not in the 92 but I'm grateful it hasn't moved. But yes, I thought actually, coming to the emirates and actually today's the first time I've been to the emirates I've fond memories of the old hybrid but I felt actually there was very conscious attempt to link the present with the past and I think, particularly for older supporters, that's really important, really important.
Speaker 2:What have the rewards been for you personally for sticking with a small town club, and are there any downsides?
Speaker 3:Well, the obvious downside is that the quality of the football is not as good as at the top level, obviously, and there are times when I might go and see a shots match on Saturday afternoon and then over the weekend, see either live or highlights of Premier League football, and it's almost like a game being played on a different planet. The level of speed and skill Though one shouldn't forget that even at, say, the fifth tier, which all the shots are, you're still probably talking about the top 2,000 footballers within the top 2,000 footballers, of a sport played by what? Maybe half a million people. So it's still pretty top of the ladder, as it were. Even so, the golf is great, I think the upside is well, all sorts of upsides. I particularly love the fact one can watch, be a spectator, very near the pitch. My wife and I, we sit in the second row and you really, when the player's over on our side, we're somewhere near the halfway line. The physicality, the crunch and also, at times, just watching the skill actually of what are, even at this level, very skillful players is absolutely fascinating and you don't see the big tactical picture unfold. But actually watching live, I'm not that fussed about that. I want the sort of spectacle and the intimacy and the close-upness. I think another upside is you feel closer emotionally to the players. You know that, you know they're not earning sort of heaps of money and you know sometimes there's actual interaction with the players and you get a sense of identification more with them. I think I'm only sad that players didn't stick around. The turnover is far higher than it used to be. Seldom do players now make more than 100 appearances, whereas in my early days sporting the shots you had some stalwarts 300, 400, even 500 appearances, and I regret that.
Speaker 3:There's one other thing and here I think I've got to be slightly careful which is there is a kind of inverted snobbery at work that if you support a small club as opposed to a big club, there can be a temptation to feel a kind of moral superiority.
Speaker 3:And I'm kind of aware of that and I know at times I do feel a moral superiority because I support a small club and not a big one.
Speaker 3:And I shouldn't, because actually, despite my story about the three names on a bit of paper, actually who you support is pretty much determined for you by family circumstances and where you live, and you know it's just luck of a draw, isn't it? So there's no kind of actual greater moral spirit supporting one club as opposed to another club as opposed to another club. So one should be aware of that. But it suits me because I think I'm a historian, I'm a observer, I record the doings and actions of other people. So in that sense I'm just slightly on the margin, as it were, slightly on the side, and somehow being a supporter of a small club that don't make waves, don't make headlines, being a supporter of a small club that don't make waves, don't make headlines, don't have a high profile, suits me psychologically better than being a supporter of one of the big clubs in the middle of the story, as it were.
Speaker 2:That's pretty interesting. Thank you. There's a lot of questions, but we've only got a couple of minutes left, so let's visit perhaps some of the more interesting ones. Any learnings from the book you think that that the audience could could take home of them today. I think you know Paul mentioned earlier when he was a fan. People write to clubs wouldn't get a response. You know clubs are investing in fan liaison officers and things like that. Now how important is that?
Speaker 3:I think it's the human touch I had a moment of. You know, one has these odd moments of epiphany and I had a kind of mini epiphany a couple of summers ago when I was renewing my season ticket for my wife and myself and I rang the club and the lady in the box office she wasn't terribly efficient, it was quite slow process, but she was so nice about it, she was so pleased we were renewing our season tickets and I felt a real buzz for how pleased she was that we were renewing. And I felt a real buzz for how pleased she was that we were renewing. And I felt, well, if I'd been renewing at a really big club, would I have had that same kind of human warmth? Maybe one would, but it's a good feeling to have that your support is appreciated.
Speaker 3:And I thought, listening to the Brighton CEO, he absolutely gets it. He struck me as a real football person of the best sort. But in what has become a very ruthless bottom line global business, you know, I don't know whether that's true universally, but I think the human touch, a sense of warmth and trying to keep some sense of kind of intimacy, even in a mega stadium like here, is good. You know, we're all human beings, so it's the human thing that counts.
Speaker 2:What a wonderful note to end it on. Keep the human touch everybody. I think that's a great takeaway for everybody to take from our chat and if you haven't got the book, I'd highly recommend it, available in all good bookstores and Amazon. Thank you, you.
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