Football Manager 2023: Miles Jacobson explains supporter profile feature

Miles Jacobson, the director of Football Manager, has revealed exactly how the supporter profile works in FM23.

Sports Interactive’s latest release has released worldwide on multiple platforms, including Steam and Xbox, although the PS5 release has been delayed.

One of the much-heralded new features sees fans given a major new role in the game.

Not only will you have to earn the respect of the board, you’ll also have to keep the fans onside, and there is a supporter matrix for every club in the game.

Of course, FM23 simulates real-life football so there is a huge number of football clubs within the game, and they all have an individual matrix based on their real-life fanbase.

We at GMS sat down with Miles to talk about all things Football Manager and he revealed the work that went into compiling this fan database.

Miles Jacobson explains FM23 supporter profile

In the game, there will be a button around the club vision that will take you to the ‘Supporters’ tab, which includes the profile of the fans.

As explained on Football Manager’s official website, the following personalities are included:

Hardcore: The most loyal and passionate section of the fanbase
Core: Representing the average football fan
Family: These supporters tend to be temperate and patient
Fair Weather: Fans who are especially impatient for success
Corporate: Most interested in the stadium’s facilities and club marketability
Casual: Less passionate and loyal than the average fan

As Miles has explained, clubs that begin in lower leagues will have more hardcore fans at the start of the game, but success can see fair-weather fans picked up as you continue to progress.

Speaking exclusively to GMS, Miles was asked about how much of a challenge the supporter profile was to create and he replied: “Well because we've got so many researchers around the world, we've got over 1000 Researchers in 51 countries and regions. And in a lot of countries, we have one researcher per club. So, in those countries, it was quite easy to do but you've then got to check it all because people can be biased right towards their own clubs.

“So, it's definitely a challenge for the research team. I can't take any credit for I did not sit there and search a single club supporter base, but the research team would have had a lot of fun doing it and trying to replicate the different fans in different countries as well.

“Because there are a lot more hardcore fans in some countries than others. And obviously, when it comes to the lower leagues in England, there are also more hardcore fans there, because the fan bases tend to be smaller. So as those fan bases grow, you'll see more fairweather fans coming on board that are there because you're playing in the Premier League, and then you're local to them, as happens when smaller clubs tend to go through the divisions.

“So, it's interesting to see the long-term impact of it all as well, not just the short term. But part of having the supporters in there again, talking about information flow, again, like I was with the agents, it's important to make sure that that the person playing has as much information as possible and we felt that in previous versions of the game, you didn't. Just having social media there to know what the supporters thought of you.

“When we all know from social media that if a player scores a hattrick in a game, someone's still going to slag them off on social media sites, they should have got six so that can be a bit more confusing rather than this concerted, overarching rating of the wider supporter base think this.”

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