The conclusion of another season of our Premier League Programme Awards offers an opportunity not only to recognise the clubs producing the finest matchday publications, but also to reflect on the changing role of the football programme itself.
When these awards began in 2017/18, football was already firmly embedded in the digital age. Club websites, social media channels, podcasts, and streaming platforms were becoming increasingly central to how supporters consumed information about their teams. In the years since, that trend has only accelerated. In that environment, the football programme faces a simple but important question: what can it offer that a smartphone cannot?
The answer, perhaps, is that the best programmes no longer try to compete with the immediacy of digital media. A team line-up will appear online the moment it is announced. Transfer news, statistics, and player interviews are available instantly through countless digital channels. The best printed programmes understand that their value lies in something very different: permanence. They offer something that cannot be replicated online: a lasting record of a club, its supporters, and its history.
A great programme is not merely a guide to the ninety minutes ahead. It is a record of a football club at a particular moment in time. Within its pages are the stories that risk being lost in the constant churn of online content: the recollections of former players, the memories of supporters, the work of club historians, and the forgotten moments preserved in old photographs, tickets, programmes, and memorabilia. Thirty years from now, those are the pages that will still be worth reading.
That is why the strongest programmes in this season’s awards were those that invested in original writing and ambitious editorial ideas. West Ham United, Newcastle United, and Fulham, our three award winners, each demonstrated in different ways the enduring strengths of the printed programme.
West Ham showed how a programme can offer remarkable breadth, combining extensive historical features with detailed coverage of every corner of the club. Newcastle demonstrated the value of celebrating supporter culture, archive material, and the stories that define a club’s identity. Fulham proved that the written word remains at the heart of the best programmes, producing a publication whose quality of storytelling would not feel out of place in a specialist football magazine.
The same philosophy could also be seen elsewhere across the league. Crystal Palace’s continued improvement, Sunderland’s outstanding visitors’ section, and Tottenham’s renewed investment in historical features all demonstrated that innovation in programme publishing remains very much alive.
This also explains why some programmes disappoint. The issue is rarely that they are badly designed. Modern football clubs generally have excellent designers and photographers. A glossy publication filled with large images can look attractive – but is it offering something that supporters will want to return to in years to come? In recent years, some clubs have chosen to abandon printed programmes entirely, while others have reduced their publications to basic digital issues offering little more than information already available online.
The decline of the traditional programme is often presented as an inevitable consequence of changing technology. Yet the evidence from this season’s awards suggests something rather different. The clubs producing the strongest publications are those that have recognised that a programme’s greatest strength is not immediacy, but permanence. A matchday programme is a snapshot of a football club, its community, and its history. It captures the voices, personalities, and memories that might otherwise disappear.
Long after the final whistle has blown, and long after the online articles and social media posts have vanished into the endless scroll of the internet, a well-produced programme remains on a supporter’s shelf – waiting to be picked up again. The clubs that continue to invest in thoughtful writing, historical research, and comprehensive coverage are not merely producing better programmes; they are helping to preserve a part of football culture that has existed for well over a century.
That is why football programmes still matter.