Congratulations to West Ham United!
It is our pleasure to announce West Ham United as the winners of our Programme of the Season for the 2020/21 season. The awards are now in their fourth year and the Hammers follow Burnley, Fulham, and Norwich City as Gold Award winners.
The team behind West Ham’s programme deserve huge credit for maintaining such high standards over the last season, at a time when many clubs, including some in the Premier League, have been cutting back on what their programme offers. Not only that, but the club have made available the digital version of their programme for free every matchday.
The Hammers programme excels when considered against each of the marking categories detailed below. Each issue is well presented, featuring some impressive design touches, such as the presentation of the historical section of the programme. There is also a huge amount to read, with a diverse range of articles offering something to all readers, while the opposition section of the programme is comprehensive, providing plenty of information about both club and team. The depth of information provided about the club is also notable, with detailed coverage of West Ham’s various teams and updates on the work of the club’s foundation.
Sheffield United take our Silver Award for the second successive season and deserve recognition for the continued excellence of their programme. The Blades’ issue was the match of West Ham’s in most respects and indeed the two programmes could only be separated with reference to their respective ‘value ratios’ – the factor we use to separate programmes tied on points – which is calculated by dividing the total number of net pages (discounting adverts) into the price of the programme. As with last season’s issue, ‘UTB’ impresses with its range of readable material, including several quality historical features.
Our Bronze Award is claimed by Fulham, who won our Gold Award two seasons ago on their last foray into the top-flight of English football. The programme has many similarities to that issue from 2018/19 and we were once again struck by the amount of original content included. Well designed, with the opposition section being especially attractively presented, the Fulham issue finished only one point behind the West Ham and Sheffield United programmes.
How we mark the programmes
The criteria we use to judge our annual award winners cover four categories. These are listed below with some of the questions we typically ask when coming up with our scores for each issue.
- Design and Layout – how well designed is the programme? Is the text easy to read? Is there some kind of logical order to the way the programme unfolds? Is there any original artwork included?
- Original Content – how much reading does the programme offer? How well written are the features? Are they informative? What historical articles are included?
- Opposition Coverage – what proportion of the programme is given over to coverage of the visiting team? Are there any articles about the club? Do we learn anything we may not have known before, such as tactical set up?
- Club Information – how much does the programme tell us about all aspects of the club? Does each issue cover the club’s other teams, such as the Academy and women’s teams? Are their articles about the club’s community work? What is there in terms of news and stats?
As always, the scores we give each issue are naturally a reflection of our personal preferences and the things that we consider to be most important in a good programme.
The challenges of COVID
The 2020/21 season has seen challenges for clubs at all levels, and programme production has not escaped unscathed. By our count, as many as 15 EFL clubs took the decision not to publish a programme during the season, while three Premier League clubs stopped producing printed programmes. Burnley and Leicester City offered digital only issues, while Manchester City provided a webpage that they called a digital programme, but which barely deserved the name.
Southampton meanwhile stopped producing at all in the second half of the season, before issuing a printed programme for their final home fixture of the season. We hope that decision from the Saints will be reflected in what other clubs choose to do once supporters are permitted back in grounds for the 2021/22 season.
We will be posting more in-depth thoughts on some of the trends within programme production and collecting in a future blog post. Over the next week or so we will also be announcing the winners of our Merit Awards for the Championship, League One, and League Two. In the meantime, you can read through all our 2020/21 reviews here. You can also see a list of all our award winners from each season here.