Matchday Programmes in English Football: Past and Now

Manchester United's programme for the FA Cup fifth-round tie against Sheffield Wednesday on 19 February 1958 went to press with eleven blank spaces where the home team should have been listed. The Munich air disaster had happened eleven days earlier and nobody yet knew who would be fit to play. That single page is the most reproduced piece of English football printing there is, and it exists because a programme in 1958 had to be typeset days before kick-off.

Which is the whole story of the format in one artefact. A matchday programme was the only document that told an English supporter who was playing, what the league table looked like, which turnstiles were open and what was on at the ground next week — and it was printed before any of that was certain. When the club website arrived, then the club app, then a Twitter account posting the team an hour before kick-off, the programme's core function was taken away piece by piece.

This page covers what the programme contained and why it mattered, how print collapsed in England, what survived, and how the collecting market values what is left. It sits alongside the wider matchday material on the England hub and the guide to English football away days.

What was actually inside an English matchday programme

The oldest surviving English programmes are single cards, sometimes a single side. Two team line-ups printed in formation — a goalkeeper at the bottom, two full-backs, three half-backs, five forwards, laid out on the page in the shape they would take on the pitch — plus the date, the competition and the referee. That formation layout persisted long after the 2-3-5 stopped being played, which is why programmes from the 1960s still show players arranged in a pyramid nobody was using.

The magazine format built outwards from that spine. By the 1950s a typical English league programme carried the manager's notes and the chairman's notes, a page of pen pictures on the visiting side, the full league table, the club's fixture list with results filled in as the season went, reserve and youth team reports, a page on the supporters' club, and advertisements — a great many advertisements — from businesses within a few miles of the ground.

Those adverts are now the most valuable historical content in the whole object. A programme from a Lancashire club in 1962 is a directory of the local economy: the mill, the brewery, the coach firm that ran the away travel, the tailor on the high street, the garage advertising a service for thirty shillings. Social historians use them for exactly this.

The pages nobody reads and everybody needs later

Admission prices by enclosure. Turnstile numbers matched to stands. The half-time scoreboard key. Ground regulations. The names of the directors. Reserve fixtures at the same ground. The address to write to for tickets. None of it was interesting in 1962 and all of it is primary evidence now, because the club's own records have very often not survived while thousands of copies of the programme have.

The half-time scoreboard, and other things only the programme explained

Before scoreboards could display words, English grounds showed other matches' half-time scores with a lettering system. A board on the perimeter wall or the roof of a stand carried letters — A, B, C, D and so on — and at half-time a man with a set of numbered plates would hang the score beside each letter. The only way to know that C was Wolves against Burnley was to have bought the programme, where the fixtures were listed against their letters.

That is the purest example of what the programme was for. It was not a souvenir. It was a functional key to the afternoon, and without it you could not read the ground.

The same applies to a whole set of conventions that have since disappeared. Squad numbering did not exist; players wore one to eleven according to position, a system the Football League made compulsory from the 1939-40 season after experiments in 1928, so the programme's numbered list was the only way to identify anyone. Substitutes did not appear in English league football until the 1960s, which is why older programmes have no bench at all.

• 1939Shirt numbers made compulsory
• 1958Munich blank line-up issue
• 1986When Saturday Comes founded
• 2018Premier League requirement removed

Documented dates from Football League rule changes, publication histories and competition regulations; milestones rather than a measure of print volume.

A programme also functioned as the club's noticeboard. Announcements about ground work, appeals for volunteers, notices about supporters' club coach departures, warnings about behaviour on the terraces — all of it went in the programme because there was no other channel. The terrace culture that generated some of those notices is covered in the history of terraces in English football.

Why print collapsed and what replaced it

The decline was not caused by one thing, and it took about twenty years.

Team news went first. Once English clubs began publishing squad information on their own websites in the late 1990s, the programme's most time-critical content was already out of date at the point of printing. Interviews followed, because a video interview on a club channel is more compelling than a transcribed one and costs less to produce than a print page.

Then the economics turned. A matchday programme is a short-run print job with a fixed cost base — editorial, design, photography, print, delivery, sellers — spread across a print run that has to be guessed in advance. Guess high and you pulp the surplus. Guess low and you sell out by kick-off and lose the revenue. As sales per head fell, the fixed costs stayed put, and the margin went from comfortable to marginal to negative at a good many English clubs.

The last blow was the phone. A supporter standing on a concourse in 2015 with a device that carried the team news, the table, the interviews and the highlights had no functional reason to buy a printed magazine, and the purchase became sentimental rather than practical. Sentimental purchases have a much smaller market.

1. 1Team newsSquad and line-up information moved to club websites, then to social media posted minutes before kick-off.
2. 2InterviewsPlayer and manager content moved to club video channels, which are cheaper per item and reach a bigger audience.
3. 3StatisticsTables, fixtures and results became instantly available online, removing the reference value of the printed page.
4. 4AdvertisingLocal advertisers followed the audience to club digital inventory, shrinking the programme's revenue base.
5. 5Print economicsFixed editorial and print costs stayed constant while the print run fell, squeezing the margin.
6. 6RegulationThe competition requirement to produce a programme was removed, leaving the decision to each club.
7. 7Digital editionMany clubs replaced print with a PDF or app edition, often free with a season ticket.

The sequence in which a programme's functions moved elsewhere; the timing varied considerably between clubs and divisions.

The rule change that made programmes optional

For most of the format's life, producing a programme was not a choice. Competition rules in England required it, which is why even clubs losing money on the exercise kept printing.

That changed at the top first. The Premier League removed the obligation with effect from the 2018-19 season after its clubs voted on it, and the English Football League subsequently relaxed its own requirement. The vote was reported at the time as a cost-saving measure, and it was, but it also formalised something that had already happened in practice: clubs were producing a programme to satisfy a rule rather than to satisfy demand.

The consequences split by division, and the split is revealing. Premier League clubs, with the largest crowds and the highest production values, were the quickest to move to digital or to stop entirely. Clubs further down the pyramid kept printing, because their supporters buy programmes, their local advertisers want print, and the margin on a small run at a modest cover price is genuinely worth having.

Cup competitions are a separate matter again. The FA produces a programme for finals at Wembley under its own competition arrangements, and those issues have always been the most widely collected in England precisely because the occasion is national. The competition's own long history is set out in the history of the FA Cup.

Which English clubs still put out a printed edition

The honest answer is that the list changes every summer, which is why it is worth explaining the pattern rather than naming names that will be wrong within a season.

Printed programmes have survived most reliably in League One, League Two and across the National League and below. Three things sustain them there. Crowds are smaller, so the print run is easy to judge. Local advertisers still value a physical page in a way national brands do not. And the programme is frequently produced by volunteers or by a single member of staff, which strips out most of the cost that made it unviable at the top.

In the Premier League and the Championship the position is mixed and unstable. Some clubs print for every match, some print only for cup ties and marquee fixtures, some produce a small-run collectors' edition at a higher price aimed explicitly at people who want the physical object, and some have gone entirely to a digital edition included with a season ticket.

Level	Typical current position on print
Premier League	Mixed — digital editions common, some collectors' print runs
Championship	Mixed — print retained by clubs with an established buying habit
League One and League Two	Print widely retained, often at a modest cover price
National League	Print near-universal and part of the matchday routine
Steps 3 to 6	Print near-universal, frequently a league requirement

Anyone who wants a specific club's position should check the club shop page before travelling, because a club that printed last season may not print this one, and the reverse also happens: several English clubs that dropped print have brought it back after supporter pressure.

What makes an English programme rare

Rarity is not fame. This is the single most misunderstood thing in the whole market, and it costs new collectors money.

The 1966 World Cup final programme is the most famous piece of English football printing in existence and is not rare, because an enormous number were produced and a great many were kept. Meanwhile a Third Division North fixture from 1934, printed in a run of a few thousand on cheap paper by a club with no reason to archive anything, may exist today in double figures.

The genuine scarcity drivers in England are these. Small clubs with small print runs. Wartime and immediate post-war issues, when paper rationing reduced programmes to a single folded sheet. Matches that were postponed or abandoned after the programmes had been printed. Fixtures played behind closed doors or at neutral grounds at short notice. Reserve, youth and testimonial matches, which were produced in tiny quantities and thrown away. Away issues, where a club produced its own programme for its travelling supporters. And anything from a ground that closed, which is a category explored in lost English football grounds.

Pirate issues are a separate category and confuse people. These were unofficial programmes sold outside grounds, particularly around cup finals and big occasions, by publishers with no connection to the club. They are collectable in their own right, and they are not the official issue, which matters for the price.

How old English programmes are valued

The trade grades condition on a scale that runs, in descending order, from mint through near mint, excellent, very good, good and fair to poor. Those words are used with reasonable consistency by British dealers, and a reputable one will list the specific faults rather than relying on the grade alone.

The faults that move the price are physical and mostly obvious once you know to look. Creasing, particularly a vertical fold down the centre from being carried in a coat pocket. Rusted staples, which stain the centre pages and eventually cut through them. Foxing, the brown speckling caused by damp. Sun fading along one edge, usually from years in a stack near a window. Tears at the spine. Sellotape repairs, which are worse than the damage they were meant to fix. Punch holes from someone's ring binder.

Then the arguable one: pen. A programme in which the buyer has written in the team changes, or filled in the half-time scores, is by strict grading damaged. Some collectors and dealers price it lower for that reason. Others treat contemporaneous annotation as evidence of use and value it, particularly on a historically significant match. The market has not settled this, and it is worth knowing that a dealer's view on it is a matter of taste rather than a rule.

1. 1IdentifyConfirm club, opponent, competition, date and whether the issue is official or a pirate.
2. 2ScarcityEstablish the likely print run from the division, the era, the club's size and any wartime paper restriction.
3. 3SignificanceCheck whether the match itself carries weight — a debut, a record, a final, an abandonment, a last match at a ground.
4. 4ConditionGrade against the standard scale and list every fault explicitly, including staples, creasing and foxing.
5. 5CompletenessCheck no pages are missing, no coupons cut out and no team sheet insert absent.
6. 6ComparablesLook at recent realised prices for the same issue in similar condition, not at asking prices.
7. 7ProvenanceFor high-value items, establish where it has been and whether it has been restored or repaired.

The order in which the British trade assesses a programme; it describes the method, not any price, since prices move constantly.

The editions collectors chase

Certain English issues are pursued regardless of condition. Pre-1900 programmes from any club, of which very few survive in any form. Early FA Cup final issues. The first match at a new ground, and the last match at an old one, which is a small and specific market that spikes whenever a club announces a move. Debut matches of players who went on to be significant, which are worthless until they are not.

Abandonment issues have their own following. When a match is called off after the programmes have been sold, the programme becomes the only record of a fixture that did not happen, and if the rearranged match got its own programme there are two for a single scheduled game.

The Munich issue described at the top of this page is the emblematic English example of a programme whose value lies in what it does not say. There are others of that type: programmes printed before news of a death reached the club, programmes for matches played in the middle of national events, wartime issues carrying air-raid instructions alongside the team lines.

There is a category worth watching that the market has not fully priced: programmes from the final seasons before English grounds were rebuilt or abandoned. These carry ground plans, stand names and admission arrangements that no longer exist anywhere else, and demand for them tends to arrive suddenly, in the year a club announces a move, from supporters who want a record of the place rather than from collectors who want a rarity. Buying ahead of that announcement is impossible to time, which is precisely why the material sits cheap for decades.

Complete runs are the collector's other obsession. A full set of one club's home programmes for a season is a common project; a full set across decades is a lifetime's work and is worth considerably more than the sum of its parts, because the missing issue in someone else's run is the one they will pay over the odds for.

Programme sellers and the ritual outside the ground

The seller is part of the format, and the format's decline has taken the seller with it.

The job has a shape anyone who went to English football before about 2010 will recognise: a hi-vis tabard, a canvas bag, a float of coins in an apron pocket, a fixed pitch near a turnstile block or on the approach from the station, and a shout that carried. Sellers worked the same spot for decades and knew their regulars. At many English clubs the sellers were supporters' club volunteers rather than employees, and the margin funded the coach to away matches.

The buying moment mattered too. A programme was purchased on the way in, read on the terrace or in the seat before kick-off, and consulted at half-time for the scores. That is roughly forty minutes of attention on a printed object, delivered reliably, week after week — which is why local advertising in it worked so well for so long.

Cashless entry and cashless catering finished off much of what remained. A supporter carrying no coins does not make an impulse purchase from someone with a canvas bag, and the card readers that solved this for club shops were slow to reach the man by turnstile fourteen.

Non-league programmes and what they still carry

Go to a Step 3 or Step 4 ground on a Saturday and the programme is thriving, which surprises people who assume the format is dead.

The reason is that at that level the programme is still doing its original job. There is no club app pushing team news. The website may be updated by one volunteer. Squad information genuinely is not available elsewhere, so the printed pen pictures and the line-ups have real utility. The visiting club's details, its route to the ground, its recent form — none of it is a search away for most supporters at that level.

The content is also better than it has any right to be. Non-league programmes carry detailed reserve and youth reports, obituaries of long-serving members, minutes of supporters' club meetings, ground development updates, and league tables for divisions nobody else prints. They are a running local record of a club, and in many cases the only one being kept. The structure of the divisions they cover is set out in how the non-league steps work.

Several English non-league competitions have historically written a programme requirement into their rules, alongside ground grading criteria, which is one reason production has held up. Leagues run programme-of-the-year competitions, and clubs take them seriously.

Fanzines and the other printed voice

The official programme could never say certain things, because the chairman wrote a page in it. That gap produced the English football fanzine.

The technology was cheap photocopying and, a little later, desktop publishing on a home computer. The trigger was a period in the mid-1980s when English supporters were being discussed publicly as a problem to be contained, and had no printed voice of their own. Terrace Talk, produced by York City supporters from 1984, is commonly cited as the first English club fanzine, and When Saturday Comes, founded in 1986, became the national title that outlasted almost all of them. The Football Supporters' Association was formed in 1985, in the same climate and for related reasons.

The club titles that followed were often very good and frequently very funny. The Gooner at Arsenal, United We Stand at Old Trafford, When Skies Are Grey at Everton, The Square Ball at Leeds and A Love Supreme at Sunderland all built readerships that ran into the thousands and lasted decades, and several moved online rather than folding.

What fanzines covered is the point. Policing, ground safety, ticket prices, boardroom competence, ownership, the state of the toilets, the quality of the pies — subjects on which the official programme was structurally incapable of saying anything true. The relationship between that independent supporter voice and formal fan representation is traced in supporters' trusts and fan ownership.

Collectors treat fanzines as a separate discipline. Print runs were small, paper quality was poor, and very few people kept them, which makes early issues of well-known titles genuinely scarce.

Storing a collection so it survives

Football programmes were printed on cheap, acidic, wood-pulp paper that is actively destroying itself. Conservation is not fussiness here; it is the difference between an item lasting another fifty years and crumbling at the fold.

Sleeve choice is the decision that does the most damage when it goes wrong. Use polyester or polypropylene sleeves. Do not use PVC, which releases plasticiser over time and leaves paper sticky, discoloured and stuck to the sleeve. Cheap ring-binder pockets sold for schoolwork are frequently PVC and are the commonest cause of ruined English collections.

Storage conditions follow ordinary archive practice, and the British Standard on the conservation and care of archive and library collections is the reference if you want the detail. Keep the collection cool, keep relative humidity moderate and — more importantly — steady, since cycling between damp and dry does more harm than a constant slightly imperfect level. Keep everything out of direct sunlight. Lofts and garages are the two worst places in an English house, because both swing wildly in temperature and humidity.

1. 1HandleClean dry hands, flat support under the item, no bending back of the spine.
2. 2SleeveInert polyester or polypropylene sleeves, one item per sleeve, never PVC and never lamination.
3. 3BoxAcid-free boxes stored upright with enough support to prevent slumping, or flat in shallow stacks.
4. 4SiteA cool interior room with steady humidity, away from windows, lofts, garages and external walls.
5. 5RepairLeave tears alone rather than taping them; adhesive tape causes worse and irreversible damage.
6. 6RecordKeep a catalogue with club, date, competition, condition grade and where each item came from.
7. 7DigitiseScan significant items so the paper can be handled less often.

General conservation practice for acidic printed paper; consult a qualified conservator before treating any item of significant value.

Sellotape deserves its own warning. Tape applied to a torn programme yellows, releases its adhesive into the paper, and leaves a stain that a conservator can only partially reverse. A tear left untouched is worth more than a tear repaired at home.

Buying and selling in England

Four routes, with different risk.

Programme fairs are the traditional one and remain the best place to handle stock before buying. They are held at grounds, sports halls and community centres around the country, and the dealers who attend are generally long-established and reputable. You can compare copies of the same issue side by side, which is the fastest way to learn grading.

Specialist dealers, several of whom advertise in the collectors' press and run mail-order and online lists, are where the scarcer material sits. They grade explicitly, they describe faults, and they will usually take a return. Their prices are higher than a marketplace listing and the difference buys you an accurate description.

Sporting memorabilia auction houses handle the top end — pre-1900 material, early cup finals, exceptional single items — with catalogue descriptions and estimates. Bear in mind the buyer's premium on top of the hammer price, and check the condition report rather than the photograph.

Online marketplaces carry the overwhelming bulk of the trade and most of the risk. Photographs hide creases, "good condition" means nothing without a scale behind it, and postage in a plain envelope will bend anything. For low-value common issues this is fine and cheap. For anything you actually care about, buy from someone who grades.

Selling works in reverse. Common issues in bulk sell as job lots and are not worth listing individually. Scarce single items do better with a dealer or an auctioneer who has a buyer list, since a specialist knows who is missing that one issue from a run. And a complete season of one club, kept together, will usually beat the same programmes sold separately — which is a good argument for not breaking up a collection you have inherited before someone who knows the market has looked at it. Further reading on the English game sits in the football section and across the blog.