Members of the team at Level Playing Field came together on an episode of the charity’s official podcast, to discuss the results of it’s latest survey.
Chair, Tony Taylor, chief executive, Owain Davies and development officer, Daniel Townley, joined fans liaison officer, Liam Bird, to dig deeper into the 2024 Level Playing Field Annual Fan Survey results report and look at the wider implications.
The podcast episode can be found here, or via your chosen podcast platform and the full transcript is available below. All details on the 2024 Level Playing Field Annual Fan Survey results, can be found here.
Liam: Welcome to The Level Playing Field Podcast. I am your host Liam Bird and I’m the fans liaison officer at the charity. And on today’s episode we are diving into the findings of the 2024 Level Playing Field Annual Fan Survey. This year over 2,000 respondents took part in the survey, from fans supporting 156 clubs across England and Wales, providing invaluable insights into the experiences of disabled sports fans.
To help unpack these findings, I’ll be speaking to my colleagues at Level Playing Field, to unpick the standout data from this year’s survey and discuss emerging trends. Plus, we talk about the actions Level Playing Field is taking to ensure sport is truly inclusive for all.
Liam: As is the way nowadays, down the screen via the Internet, I have Daniel Townley, who is the development officer at Level Playing Field and also the data guy. Hello, Daniel.
Daniel: Hello, Liam.
Liam: We also have Owain Davis, who is the chief executive at Level Playing Field and also the man with the most trustworthy voice according to the BBC, The Traitors. Owain Davies. Hello, Owain.
Owain Davies: Pleasure to be here. Thanks Liam.
Liam: And we also have the chair of Level Playing Field, Tony Taylor. Hello Tony.
Tony Taylor: I’m not sure where that puts me with the Yorkshireman accent. But we’ll see how that goes.
Liam: Thank you for joining us.
So, this chat is regarding the Level Playing Field annual fan survey and Daniel, as the person who’s pulled this data from 2055 respondents, could you please uh, kind of give us a brief overview of this year’s survey and uh, what sets this year’s survey apart from last year’s survey?
Daniel: Yeah, no problem. So as you mentioned, 2055 responses is our uh, kind of highest response rate yet. So in one sense that sets it apart. This is our biggest survey today. We also had 156 different clubs represented, different fans from those different clubs taking part. And so it’s Overall like a 15% response rate increase from last year, which is great. Um, but in terms of the actual kind of content, um, we asked some questions this year about arrival times, and departure times of fans, which we’ll talk about a little bit more detail later on. But that was something that was new. And then we also gave fans the option to feedback on uh, club’s use of technology. So in particular thinking around contactless payments and digital ticketing, which we hadn’t asked before. So there were some new things from this year’s survey, but really this is just a continuation of the year-on-year surveys that we’ve been running to just try and understand more about the experiences of disabled fans attending live sport.
Liam: What data or statistics stood out to all of you really from this year’s survey, if any?
Owain: One of the ones that kind of obviously stood out. Not only one of the things that stood out the best, is obviously the increase in responses. The fact that disabled people want to invest in the survey such as this, to take the time out to share their experiences, to talk about it. I suppose in that in the end end goal from this is to make, make it make enhancements, to make changes, to better educate, to inform and to do that. But you know, drilling down into one specific statistic, the one that kind have I suppose surprises and you know, unfortunate there is the year-on-year growth is deeply concerning around the abuse. You know, seeing that rise to eight and a half percent. But respondents reporting this is a barrier to attending life sport. People being abused at uh football should not be a barrier in 2025 or 2024. And the report was done and it’s completely unacceptable and it’s something that we have to address. I know we’ll touch base a little bit, a bit more detail but we just need to kind of understand that, kind of that collective responsibility about delivering that. For me that’s kind of the most surprising. Seeing that year-on-year growth.
Tony: From my point of view I don’t think there’s anything there that is particularly surprising. But what because we’ve got this fantastic response of over 2,000 people, we’ve now got data that actually shows what the real issues are and um, you. We’ve got evidence that we could present to clubs and governing bodies as to what needs to be done and what needs to be needs to be changed. So I’m not particularly surprised by any of the results but I’m delighted that we’ve got them and we’ve got something that’s really substantive.
Liam: So with that in mind then Tony, I mean this is the fourth year of the survey. So from your viewpoint, how much progress has actually been made in addressing the barriers identified over the years? Such as as Owain has said, disability abuse.
Tony: Yeah, I remember back to the days when I first joined Level Playing Field. And if we put a call into a governing body, or a club, or stadium management team, it was met with fear and trepidation. What are these guys from Level Playing Field going to throw it as? Now what’s changed over the years is because we’re able to produce bus and information and evidence, we’re able to work effectively collaborative with those organisations to make changes. And you know, I’m not going to pretend for a minute that everything’s hooky dory because we, we know it isn’t. There are a lot of problems that we need to address, but we are seeing incremental improvements and I think if somebody had said to us that we would have a Premier League pledge in 2018, we’d have been laughed out of court. But we’ve got that and we’ve got the progress, we’ve got uh, those little changes. But every little change makes such a huge difference in the life of disabled spectators and supporters.
Liam: One of the things that I would say that the survey’s kind of done is also kind of got the EFL to look at the away fans sat with home fans. That was coming up in our survey and that’s now made a change. So again, for me I think it shows actually the surveys impact across all levels of football. We can see that real change happening from the data that we’re getting from the survey. However you spoke about things improving. I mean this is, this is as I said, four years of the survey. But barriers such as social attitudes and physical access remains an issue. Is this a failure of clubs, governing bodies or advocacy efforts by ourselves, Level Playing Field?
Tony Taylor: It’s a humdinger of a question that one, Liam. I think it’s a societal problem as much as anything. We live in a world where it’s almost become commonplace for people to be able to hurl abuse, at individuals behind – hiding behind a keyboard. And we’re seeing that more and more in public life as well as in uh, the sort of private aspects of it. I’ve been on the receiving end of that sort of activity myself in the past and it’s grotesque, it really is unpleasant and it does make you feel very uneasy. And I do worry that we have a growth in that issue and that it’s fueled really by the general society that we live in. So I think there’s for us just to say we can sort it out by clubs taking an attitude about it or governing bodies taking an attitude about it. I think it goes far deeper than that and it really is an issue that does need to be addressed, but it needs to be addressed at the very highest leve
Owain: It’s a shared responsibility. Progress is being made, but we need greater awareness and cohesive action is absolutely required. Understanding that it’s not just in isolation that we can make the changes. We need better education, we need more people sharing the experiences which thankfully, the biggest response rate that we’ve had for the survey in Level Playing Field’s history will only help and support that, but also what we’re going to do with that data to better educate – to better inform. You know, disability remains the largest minority group in any population, yet often it feels like it’s overlooked in certain discussions. When you look at kind of other aspects of the Equality act or the other strands. I think that we need to ensure that we know we elevate the profile of disability, we elevate the kind of the situation that people are facing and we also demonstrate what proactive measures can do and the lasting impact of that. You know, we often talk about going to watch live sport is more than the 90 minutes or the 80 minutes or whatever sport that you follow. It allows people to connect with the community. There’s anecdotal evidence that kind of demonstrates the impact on wellbeing – physical and mental wellbeing – bringing people together, allowing families to be families and ensuring that clubs that represent the communities are reflective of the communities they serve. And I think that having that at the heart and the ambition of what we’re trying to achieve in driving the standards of access, inclusion, with good, sound facts that we have, can make the change. It allows us to speak with authority, authority and making key decisions that everyone has the responsibility in doing this. It’s not just a nice thing to do, is something that, that demonstrates that there’s certain areas that we’re lacking and we need to make a difference.
Daniel: So whilst I’d love to believe that the recommendations in our fan survey each year are immediately acted upon by clubs, uh, and governing bodies, the reality is that we know it can take time to inform, to persuade, to educate and to make those necessary improvements for disabled fans. What I would say is that there have been things that have improved over the four years that we’ve run the survey. One of the stats that has actually seen a year-on-year kind of positive is the question, are there any sports or sporting venues that you feel unable to attend because they’re inaccessible? We’ve actually seen a decrease in the number of supporters who have identified that they’re unable to attend because of that inaccessibility. So that’s actually a positive from this year’s survey. But with that we know clearly that there are still some areas with significant room for improvement still.
Speaker B: Very quickly want to pick on what Tony said there, regarding the social attitudes towards disability. We’ve obviously had one government wehereabouts probably it wasn’t the greatest towards disabled people. We’ve got a new government who some might argue aren’t really doing any better. I mean, how much does the social conversation that is having regarding disability outside of sport really bleed into what is actually happening inside a stadium bowl?
Tony: From my point of view I’m absolutely convinced that there’s 100% correlation between what happens in the public domain. The real issue I think is that when we talk about the social model of disability and so on and it really comes down to that. It is a social model and it’s about society. If society is making it okay to be discriminatory against uh, disabled people or if it’s okay to put barriers in the way. And sometimes the barriers aren’t necessarily ah, just a straightforward physical barrier. Sometimes it’s just an attitudinal thing to sort of well we’ll look after those poor disabled people, we’ll deal with them um, and then nothing actually happens. And there is that sort of patronising attitude that sometimes creeps in without people realising. And I think it can be so, so detrimental. And it’s not long when you see politicians or people in the public domain talking in that sort of way. It soon creeps down onto the terraces and you soon get that sort of abuse being hurled at you or you get the, I’ve had the situation there many times where people said you get the preferential car parking, you get the great viewing situation – it’s no fun.
Liam: So Daniel, kind of coming back to the data itself and looking back over the years because you have been kind of the person who has been accumulating all this data. What trends have you seen over the years positive or negative?
Daniel: So the trends from this year are uh, the same as last year which obviously makes sense because that’s what makes in the trend. Um, but yeah, the disability abuse as own mentioned uh, has increased year on year so from 5.5% to 6 and a half percent to 7% and now 8 and a half percent of disabled fans saying that and disability abuse is a barrier to them attending live sport, you might think well that’s only you know, single digit percentages. But reality is when you think about that as people who are potentially put off from attending live sport, you know, altogether who consider it to be a barrier to them attending, that’s actually a huge number of disabled fans. So who this is an issue. Public transport inaccessibility again’s another one with this year on year increase from 16% a few years back to now 22% of fans saying that that’s a barrier to them attending. That’s something that I think clubs, councils, yeah, lots of different kind of parties that need to really take seriously and think how can we make these public transports more accessible, particularly on match days, make sure that actually people are able to get to the games in the first place. And then uh, a lack of support from club staff is another one where we’ve seen this kind of year-on-year increase. It was actually the same percent this year as last year, but other than that it’s been going up. And so again this is something that clubs really need to take seriously. Do they have club staff who are contactable on match days? Do they have a dedicated disability access office or, or liaison officer? Um, are ah, they providing that level of support to their disabled fans? So they’re the sort of the trends of increased. In terms of the biggest change from last year to this year it was actually around the cost of attending. So that was the highest increase that went up five and a half percentage points from last year. So this year 22 and a half percent of fans said that the cost of attending was a barrier to them attending. And uh, it’s just interesting that was our focus for our last annual fan survey where we asked in detail about the cost of attending and found that actually there were very significant costs for attending home and away games for disabled fans. But that’s actually increase even from that last uh, year’s results that we had. So this is something again that we think clubs should be really considering taking seriously whether it’s actually affordable, whether they’re pricing out disabled people from being able to attend live sport.
Liam: That’s interesting because a lot of the media attention at the moment is around like PSR which is financial fair play within football. And we’ve seen clubs kind of erodees concession prices. Do you think that there is a worry with PSR becoming a lot more in the limelight in clubs trying to tighten belts that disability or ticketing costs could increase for disabled people? Do you think that’s potential whereouts the concessions that might be happening for disabled fans will either go or will increase in price, which we already know has a massive impact already on disabled people who statistically earn less than non disabled people?
Owain: I guess we’ve seen certain scenarios already this year where we’ve been involved in, where we’ve spoken about this on, you know, on public media platforms around accessible parking, the charges that we’ve seen allocated within this the costings that have been kind of added to this. Inflating the prices for the same plans, adding an additional burden about attending which is obviously referenced and evidenced in our, in our annual fan survey which is making a further barrier that you know – the financial, the cost of living disproportionately impact disabled people more and it is becoming burden. I think you know there’s a certain view that we need to kind of avoid is that seeing that these kind of reasonable adjustments, as Tony said. It’s not a luxury, it is a reasonable adjustment. It is the difference between being able to attend and not being able to attend, being included in your community and society or being excluded. And from that we need, that needs to be the front of any decision making process and ensuring that we as a society understand that, understand that you know these parking spaces are reasonable adjustments, there as an aid to support somebody and be able to go to watch live sport. And that’s something that we need to kind of consider. So yes, in short answer there is a threat. It is something that we kind of consider that as clubs trying to kind of evolve the financial kind of balancing of the books as it were. We can’t use this ability as an opportunity to kind of address that. When it’s a reasonable adjustment.
Tony: Terminology – we talk about it being a concession. I’m not interested in concession. All I’m interested is equality, uh, of opportunity so that a disabled plan has exactly the same opportunity to attend as anybody else. And I think that’s, you know, that’s something that we need to work on in the longer-term. But you know that there’s no doubt in my mind that as we face uh, economic issues in the world of 2025 and moving forward that this sort of issue may well become something that comes to the poor. And it is something that we need to really be uh, absolutely clear of. And Ohine’s right, you know we do need to think of it rather not in terms of it being a concessionary or a giveaw. But it needs to be a reasonable adjustment and needs to be seen as reasonable adjustment. And I have no doubt at some point it will be determined as such. But we’re not at that stage yet.
Liam: I want to come back to some of the things that Daniel kind’ve has already spoken about. We’ve spoken a lot about disability abuse already. But Daniel, you’ve already kind of said like it’s doubled from the start of when we started doing the annual fan survey to now. So it Looks like it’s on the increase. Regarding as an organisation, I mean, what can organisations like Level Playing Field do to kind of tackle this issue beyond recommending improvements reporting mechanisms?
Daniel: I mean, we obviously are continuing to try and raise this message of how important this is with fans, with clubs, with the police. So we’ve done some work with the dedicated football officers as well, just to try and make them aware. Look, this is the experience of disabled fans. This is a barrier to an attendending live sport. This is something that needs to be taken really seriously. Obviously just improving those reporting mechanisms, but making sure that disabled fans know how they’re able to do that. And bearing in mind, some of the things that may actually be slightly different for disabled supporters. We know for example, that there are some disabled fans who maybe feel more vulnerable, about reporting actually on a gameday, for example. Is that being taken into account by clubs? You know, are there other different measures or considerations being put into place for disabled supporters in terms of reporting and are they taking these things seriously? I think a. Well, not a lot of the time, but some of the time the inquiries and complaints that come through to us because we feel like they’re perhaps dismissed by clubs or not taking as seriously as perhaps some of the other protected characteristics. And so I think, yeah, just really making sure that actually that’s not acceptable. Clubs do need to be taking these complaints seriously. Any accusations of abuse need to be investigated, taken seriously. Um, and yeah, disabled fans need to be protected at the end of the day.
Liam: Finally, regarding the data side of things, the survey revealed that 22% of disabled fans face challenges when using public transport, yet many clubs encourage fans to use this option at the same time. Accessible parking, as we all know, is becoming increasingly limited and expensive and with some clubs raising the price quite significantly. How do you think that kind of double burden impacts disabled fans? And how can clubs balance their sustainability goals with the accessible needs of disabled people?
Tony Taylor: Kind of a double whammy, I guess. But just being disabled is an expensive existence because you do have exist additional costs. I mean we’re living at the moment in a really bad cold spell. Disabled people tend to need to put more heating on. So the general cost of living for a disabled person, is an additional burden. I’m not sure what their precise percentage is, but it can be quite, quite a significant add on. But then when you start talking about going to what football match, the cost of travel, the amount of time it takes just to organise things. Because somebody is disabled, doesn’t mean they don’t work, but they still need to take time out of their working day to be able to organise their travel and their plan for getting there. So I think it’s a real issue and in terms of how clubs can deal with this, I think one of the important things that we need to be aware of it that clubs are accept that they, they still have a social responsibility like any other organisation have a social responsibility. And it’s important that they are looking at this and doing what they can to assist. And I’m not going to use the argument about disabled fans being a big economic contributor to clubs. I think that’s a bit of a tired argument, but it is an element of relevance to it. But clubs need to make sure that they are doing the right thing. They need to make sure that they are applying, as Owain was saying earlier, those reasonable adjustments and they need to make sure that they have that corporate social responsibility as well as being the hub of the community, the they are corporate bodies and they need to uh, comply with their responsibilities in that way.
Owain: When clubs are kind of planning and mapping this is that yes they have ambitions where obviously around the kind of the green plans and everything such as that. But when it kind of comes to transport plans for disabled people it’s that clubs need to recognise that the transport solution for disabled fans require separate and thoughtful planning. They need to kind of consider all of these things that you know it’s all well good though we want to turn at target the environmental considerations are rightly so, we must do that but sometimes they can work in opposition as well. And that kind of the ambition to do this is reality because if we actually kind of spell out kind of the situation they’re saying right, we’re pointing all fans upon leaving a match which has had over 80,000 fans and they’re saying right, go to this major transport hubs such a train station or a bus station, and then everyone trying to cram ono a really busy train where a lot of people can stand up in the train itself, a wheelchair user may not be able to get onto that train or that the train after, or the train after that because of the kind of the concentration of people makes it nearly impossible. And these are first hand accounts that we hear that disabled people have no confidence when it comes to that public transport from when it comes to busy matchdays. And I think that’s a kind of a key element. We need to understand that. So if that means increasing the number of accessible parking spaces. Accessible stadia outlines that there’s a minimum number of spaces. Well if that’s a minimum number, clubs need to understand that kind of the issues and barriers disabled people faces spelt out in the annual fan survey. Then if that’s the case that we need to increase that then clubs would be looking to do that to make it a possibility to overcome those barriers.
Daniel: With my slightly cynical hat on, I’d love to believe that clubs are encouraging fans to use public transport for purely sustainability reasons. But I think oftentimes it is down to just purely a lack of parking spaces. Um and we know that there is a significant lack of parking at ah many clubs and accessible parking specifically even less so. And uh, ye as has been said I think clubs need to recognise that parking is specifically accessible. Parking can be the difference between friendsans attending or not. And they just need to really think about what are some potential alternatives if they have not enough accessible parking spaces. Thinking around accessible shuttle buses or drop off points that are accessible park and ride services, all these things kind of should be encouraged as potential alternatives.
Liam: All those ideas are obviously great but what I’ll always say is speak to your disabled fans because they’re the ones that are going toa be using the service. Don’t just implement it and go well we’ve done this for you. And then they’re like well why? It doesn’t work.
I want to move, Daniel, to the new section of the survey. So each year, for people who don’t know in the level playing field annual fan survey we try and incorporate a particular special section that will focus on an individual subject matter. And this year we focused on the arrival and departure times of disabled fans. Why have we done this this year in the survey and what kind of insight has it provided us?
Daniel: Yeah, so as with all of our surveys every year we ask these questions because this is what we’re hearing from disabled supporters. So from individual conversations that we’ve had uh, through things like our found forums we’re hearing the experiences of disabled supporters and we know uh, that many supporters were either arriving very early, uh in order to make sure that their access requirements were met or potentially leaving early in order to, to get away and for accessibility reasons. And so yeah, things like perhaps you know if they have a particular service or facility that they require like an audio headset for example making sure that they get there in plenty of time so that that’s started or if they need to Get a uh, coach after the match making sure that they leave early so that they can actually have the time to get to that coach and avoid crowds. So all these different sort of reasons and scenarios we’ve heard about from fans. So that was really the prompt for us to ask these questions. In a bit more detail, the survey showed that over 70% of the respondents said that their timings were affected, for accessibility reasons. So either arriving earlier or later or departing earlier or later. So over 70% of firms have those consideration in terms of accessibility. Clubs should be taken up on board and there needs to be this recognition and understanding that for many disabled supporters their matchday may look different and what are they doing to ensure that you know, supporters are able to obviously both arrive safely and leave safely. But you know, are there other things I may to consider, about implementing effective stewarding that could help to improve the accessibility for supporters? Yeah, just uh, ensuring that they’re able to arrive and depart at a time that’s going to be suitable for them and not made to feel like they have to arrive much earlier than they would want to or that they would have to leave before the end of the match even though they don’t want to. Those conversations should be had about what are their specific access requirements and how can the club help to meet those, so they’re not forced to um, into something they don’t want to do.
Liam: Owain, just very quickly on that then. So what I’m really hearing from what Daniel’s telling me is that supporters are not only possibly, as we said, the price of football go up, might potentially paying more to watch less of a game because of access and the barriers, but also they’re giving up time. So if you’re having to give up potentially an hour more than a nond disabled person, like that’s time that potentially you’re moving away from your friends, from going to the pub or the caf and engaging in the social aspects of football. How much should clubs actually take in this portion of the survey regarding arrival and leaving times?
Owain: Adding on to the point you say he’s taken away from being with your friends and your family. But there’s also a tangible cost some disabled people. For some disabled people who pay for their personal assistant or carer to go to the game, that’s an additional hour that they might have to kind of um, fork out to kind of provide that support as well. Clubs need to kind of really understand the kind of the whole aspect of a person’s matchday experience. It doesn’t start from the moment that you’re in your seat, you know, obviously about how you’re kind of getting into it and it’s vital that you kind of to do that. You know, it’s a significant area that we focused in on as the part of this survey and that broader experience contributes to kind of, perhaps, if it’s a lesser one, people making the decision not going and again, removing themselves from that. So it is vital that clubs kind of focus in on this, understand kind of, you know, in particularly why this is happening, you know, whether if it’s a city centre club and understanding why is there somebody making the choice about going in, you know, incredibly earlier, or is it, uh, kind of why they leaving, why are they leaving later or, you know, and everything in between to understand how they can improve that, match the experience and put those points in. We’ve heard firsthand about how inclement weather and the cold weather really impacts disabled people from engaging with fans, going to stadium, seeing fans and talk about their experiences. And this obviously can obviously contribute to that. If they have to stay longer or they have to arrive earlier, this kind of contributes to that. So, yes, the clubs absolutely need to kind of focus in on these, these special areas of the survey to ensure that the full match day experience is considered and appropriate measures in place to make sure that it’s inclusive for all disabled people to watch live sport.
Liam: Coming back to you, Daniel, this year we saw over 2000 respondents from fans supporting over 156 clubs across the sporting landscape, not just in football, but in, and rugby cricket at the women’s game in particular. I mean that without being boastful, that’s a fantastic achievement for us. But how do you ensure that the results generally reflect the experiences of disabled fans across the uk, given that participation really does rely on the awareness and access to the survey?
Daniel: Yeah, I mean, the simple answer to your question is by improving that awareness and access to the survey, we do what we can to try and obviously encourage clubs and governing bodies to share the survey with their supporters. We obviously promote it ourselves and try and make the access to the survey good as it can be. So we obviously people take it online, but there’s the option, if they want to, to phone us so that they can talk through the survey results with us if they want to, or we can print off a copy. So, yeah, making sure that it is accessible to disabled people. I mean, the reality is that no survey is perfect and is going to kind of perfectly reflect the views of the body of people that it’s trying to survey. But 2000 responses is a very high response rate. We have good hand disability representation across the survey. The results that we have we’re confident is a good reflection of the actual experience experience of disabled supporters attending live sports. And we’ve seen, you know, year-on-year increases in the number of responses. But we also are uh, slightly adapting the questions based on the responses that we’ve had and our uh, interactions with disabled people. So for example, I mentioned at the start about the fact that we’ve asked about technologies for the first time. That’s a new part of the survey because that’s what fans are telling us. To comment on that we had uh, over 20% that over a fifth of fans talk about how they, they still want the ability to pay for things using cash and still want physical tickets. So some of those technologies that are coming in that are being kind of mandated across clubs are not necessarily appropriate for all disabled fans. So that kind of feedback we’re able to then feed into this survey and actually get those results from disable fans.
Liam: People who are going to continue taking this survey. They’re going to want to see results really because that’s the reason why they’re doing the survey. They want to make sure that their voices are heard and therefore hopefully that voice is heard and action taken. So Owain and Tony, how are we going to use this data to kind of drive change and also what major challenges do you actually see? 4 level playing field in improving accessibility and inclusion of disable fans, moving to the next survey in 2026?
Owain: Firstly, that data informs that targeted advocacy, both at local level and national levels. It allows people to engage, or ourselves to engage with governing bodies with clubs to be able to kind of shape their advice. This is the experience that a disabled person a is receiving or group of disabled people are receiving. This is how we’re gonna combat that. So it allows kind of the solutions to be shaped around that. And we’re very fortunate. Level Playing Field, that part of our mantra really is that to be a part of the solution, that we have the technical expertise in-house. But not only that is that we also have that level of engagement with fans through disabled supporters’ association network, through the Level Playing Field forums and also through this data to be able to kind of to share those good experiences that are having and also equally what’s happening well at clubs, um, to be able to kind of combat that those kind of isolated areas that are doing well. How can we cascade that across. But some of the real kind of success pieces that we’re probably seen already which is going to make a change, we’ve referenced it already, Liam, is around the legislation changes that the EFL have brought in and outlawing all away fans being disabled, fans being uh, located with home fans that’s now being outlawed. And that’s kind of a sense where it’s that ah, collaborative effort where the governance of the game is taking accountability to make that change and that’s off the back of data that’s being driven and then actual and also fan insight and fan engagement as well being able to shape that. And it just demonstrates that this can’t be done in isolation. It’s ah, a collective approach to make those particular changes and equally that’s how that kind of happened as well in certain scenarios where around the colorblind kit crashes, you know that’s something that’s kind of still needs to be tightened up but we’re seeing that kind of greater level of awareness where it s fan engagement, insights from the flat day experience that deriving that change as well. So I think that there’s some really positive stuff that we’re seeing those changes. But also as well there’s better education. You know this last year again with the EFL, that Daniel’s been leading on an education programme, disability access offices that are being on a six month programme of detail and how they can drive the standards of access inclusion within their clubs to understand how through an access audit how you can improve access and inclusion that is not just an individual person at the club. Everyone has that accountability how they and as a disability access officer, how they lead that and ensure that everyone in the club has that understanding about delivering it and access and inclusion within the department.
Level Playing Field, often whenever we’re kind of raising key issues is that there’s that request by governing bodies, by government about providing the data to be able to kind of steer that change. We will receive a number of those anecdotal and emotive kind of responses about the match day experience which are absolutely valid. But we also then need to have that large scale data which makes the kind of the messages that we’re sharing, the experiencing that we’re delivering to the kind of the key decision makers that are irrefutable to kind of that changes need to happen alongside that fan data and that fan insights that we’re getting. So that request is something that has kind of been growing and off the body of the surveys that we have now or the responses that we have, we are now over 2000 responses allowing us to be able to kind of talk with absolute authority. But we’re seeing this kind of greater level of awareness, you know from, you know from an organisation we are being requested to talk on national media scales where the more we talk about it the more we able to share strong data to be able to make and steer change. We will see progress and we are unfortunately we are seeing those progresses as well. And in 2025 we’re also see the launch of the accessible stadia guide, the second edition. It’s been been written over a number of years now and this will also allow us to kind of, to really push the envelope even further about improving the standards of access and inclusion. So I think you know there is cover of a number of ways that we can see that change is happening already in, in some elements but we’re also, we cannot be complacent. We also need to see a heck of a lot more happening so that these, these year on year stats we’ve seen whether it’s been abuse, the societal issues they come down and the barriers for attending life sports or obviously become far less and hopefully non existent as well.
Tony: I often think I would love to be able to be in a position where I can sit down with the board at Level Playing Field and said hey, hey guys, we’re done, we’re sorted. Everything, everything’s fine, everything’s hunky dory. We know it’s not going to be like that. I think uh, is absolutely right and Daniel I think mentioned it earlier on that um no survey is ever going to immediately result in everything being fine. We know that’s not going toa be the case. What we are able to achieve because of the data that we’ve got that we could presentvent the evidence to clubs, to governing bodies and so on and we can actually impact change and it might be marginal change. I mean I think the Disability Access Office certificate, the great incremental change so will have stewards who actually are entirely familiar, or Access Officers are familiar with our requirements and I think those little changes are important. But what we do face as an organisation and I guess as a society as a whole is we have this horrible sort of league table of protected characteristics which is totally against everything that’s supposed to be in the Equality Act. And I want to make sure that we see disability ranked alongside on equal terms with all the other protected characteristics and that we make sure that clubs and governing bodies and the like recognise their responsibilities in that regard. Now, there’s a lot of work involved in that and it’s not just involved in football, but in society as a whole. So I think, uh, there’s a great deal of work for us to pay our attention to.
Liam: Perfect. Tony Owain, Daniel, thank you very much for your time. Uh, you can read the Level Playing Field fan survey by visiting the website levelplainfield.org.uk or you can by clicking the link in the podcast Show Notes or cheque out our social media pages on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter/X. This is it for the episode. If you’re going into a match, then have a good one. Thanks so much. Bye.