SINGAPORE — Long after the matchday crowd had dispersed at the Jurong East Stadium one Saturday evening, Lion City Sailors supporter Eddy Hirono remained in the stands holding a microphone to interview the club’s midfielder and goal-scorer.

Some may mistake the 35-year-old for a sports journalist doing his job, but Mr Hirono is a religious follower of the ups and downs of the local football scene, providing news coverage and post-match analyses as a personal project.

The Singaporean founded SailorFanTalk in 2021 along with a fellow fan — a team-specific fan site dedicated to the Sailors that contains everything that one wants to know about the football club. His post-match player and fan interviews also need to be edited after every game and published on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. 

It is a lot of work for a fan, but Mr Hirono does it because official outlets are not giving him the coverage he desires for his Singapore Premier League (SPL) club, relative to those about foreign teams in Britain's English Premier League, for example.

“I grew up in an age where we would go to (websites like) Soccernet for news, and there's all kinds of bits and pieces of news around for us to digest and sink our teeth into. But in our era there’s a lot of short form content — and for me that wasn't enough,” said Mr Hirono.

“And I always thought like, if no one else is going to write it, then maybe I should write it myself.” 

Despite the dwindling spectatorship at SPL matches, there is still a pool of diehard fans like Mr Hirono who continue to keep alive the hopes that the local football scene will return to its form during the heyday of the Malaysia Cup in the 1970s.

Back then, more than 50,000 would pack the spectator stands at the old National Stadium in Kallang during key matches. By the 2013 season, the league average for attendances at live SPL matches was around 1,200.

In 2023, that number has fallen to 752 for all the matches after approximately 17 game weeks, a figure slightly below last year’s average of 832 for the entire season, according to numbers provided by the Football Association of Singapore (FAS).

FAS has not responded to TODAY's queries about its efforts to grow interest in the SPL. But the visible signs of empty spectator stands do not faze a sizeable group of young fans, who turn up at every match to show support for their teams and go to great lengths to drum up interest.

At the Jurong East Stadium on July 1, Mr Hirono introduced TODAY to several members of his group of around 60 Lion City Sailors fans known as “The Crew”, who were there to watch their team beat Tanjong Pagar United 7-1. 

They sang tirelessly to the beat of their drums, and blared roars, cheers, chants and boos at every action. When Sailors player Lionel Tan scored his first goal for the club that evening — a well-placed header from a corner — he was duly serenaded by the visiting fans. 

“They've come up with individual songs for our players, wait for us after every game to greet us and even prepare cakes to celebrate our birthdays with us. Our fans never fail to make us feel special,” said the 26-year-old defender.

“If you see the age profile (of the Sailors fans), most of them are younger than myself,” said Mr Hirono, who has been following the SPL since 2016. He began watching local football after the LionsXII's four-year participation in the Malaysian Super League. 

Even though they are aware that the general public does not think much about the local football league, Mr Hirono said that fan groups here are just as dedicated to their teams as foreign fan clubs in more prestigious leagues abroad.

“What's not seen by the public is that (fans here) spend their own money and time not only to buy jerseys and all that, but also to buy posters of players, making flags… they would even print up the lyrics to the chants that we use and paste them on walls one hour before kickoff," he said.

“This is the kind of stuff that really shows the passion that, you know, I thought was dead in Singapore.” 

BUILDING THEIR OWN COMMUNITY

Like Mr Hirono, 27-year-old Brandon Gan also founded The Goal Difference, a local football community on Telegram and YouTube channel with over 1,100 subscribers.

There, he vlogs about matchday experiences at prominent SPL games. Mr Gan, who works in a commercial field of the sporting industry, is also a frequent spectator at SPL games.

Speaking to TODAY before a match between Geylang International and Tampines Rovers at Our Tampines Hub, Mr Gan said that he decided to start the channel in 2021 after watching the national team play Indonesia in the 2020 AFF Suzuki Cup, which he felt “galvanised the nation”. 

The Singapore side had two players sent off by the 67th minute but put on a valiant effort to gain a 2-1 lead, before eventually succumbing 4-2 to the opposition. 

That match got him interested in local SPL matches.

But he quickly realised that the buzz generated by the national team’s performance did not quite translate to similar enthusiasm for the SPL, as live viewership numbers were dropping.

“I saw the state of affairs (at the stadiums) and I thought, you know, maybe I can do something to do my part to improve the exposure and the fan support here,” he said.

While physical audiences at live matches may be shrinking, viewership online appears to be headed in the opposite direction, based on official statistics from the FAS. 

The 2023 season is streamed live on YouTube and has thus far recorded an average viewership of 24,787 for all nine SPL clubs, up from last year’s figure of 22,656.

That is why both Mr Gan and Mr Hirono believe that it is important for fans to do their part online to generate interest in the local league, citing the budget constraints that the FAS and most SPL clubs have. 

The FAS is funded on a deficit-funding basis, and most SPL clubs operate on a budget of about between S$1.2 million and S$1.5 million, with about S$800,000 of that coming in the form of subsidies, according to a 2022 report by the Straits Times.

“It's got to be a bottom-up approach," said Mr Hirono.

"I think there must be fellow content creators for each club to rise up and really keep creating your own content."

Their efforts are also winning over some younger fans, like 12-year-old Jansen Pang and 15-year-old Jack Johnson. The duo run Instagram accounts dedicated to their favourite teams Tanjong Pagar United and Balestier Khalsa respectively. 

Jansen’s "Rising Jaguars" page features short videos overlaid with music, or ‘edits’ of Tanjong Pagar United’s match highlights, while Johnson’s "BKFC TV" documents his group of supporters’ matchday experiences supporting Balestier with often humorous post-match interviews. 

TODAY counted around 20 of such fan accounts on Instagram dedicated to SPL teams.

Such ground-up efforts by fans have been encouraging for SPL players too. Tampines Rovers forward Faris Ramli said he has seen “some wonderful highlight reels” from Instagram fan pages.

His club teammates Kegan Phang and Syed Firdaus Hassan concur, with the latter believing that such content creators can help Singaporeans know more about local football and help the SPL reach a wider audience.

"I have seen a lot of these content creators and I must say that they do help to bring the SPL forward," said the 25-year-old midfielder.

NOTHING BEATS WATCHING A MATCH LIVE

Despite a crushing 1-7 defeat of his team by the Lion City Sailors, Jansen said that a matchday experience was still “better than watching the English Premier League at home”.

He said the shouts and gasps from the spectators add to the atmosphere. “You can see more things if you come to the stadium to watch rather than watching on TV,” said the Primary 6 student from Greenridge Primary School. 

Several people told TODAY at the sidelines that they have had the opportunity to befriend the same players that they cheer for on the pitch, which adds to the appeal of coming to the games. 

“The bond is closer (between) the teams and the fans when you watch in real life,” said 18-year-old Albirex Niigata (Singapore) fan Mr Muhammad Haziq Hafizhan, who manages an Albirex fan account on Instagram called Swanarmy19. 

“What are the chances that you (personally) know Cristiano Ronaldo or Messi? If you come down to watch SPL, you know those players,” said the Year Two polytechnic student. 

The accessibility in which local players and fans can interact works in the league’s favour, said Mr Rhysh Roshan Rai, an ex-football player who now does commentary and punditry for the SPL.

“You can actually get quite close to the players here or you can actually meet them outside the stadium. There's no security issues and things like that,” Mr Rai said, adding that the players’ presence on social media can also help build a connection between them. 

QUALITY PLAYERS, FAN ENGAGEMENT

High-profile player signings in recent seasons and better fan engagement efforts have also been touted as some reasons why the league might be appealing to these younger fans.

Mr Shasi Kumar, a commentator and pundit for the SPL, said that “with quality comes fan support”. He cited the example of the Lion City Sailors who have a penchant for signing foreign players of substantial pedigree, owing to their financial might as the only privatised club in the SPL. 

The club’s key players like Diego Lopes and Maxime Lestienne, purchased in 2021 and 2022 respectively, both played professionally for teams in competitive European leagues and have set the SPL alight. The Sailors also announced three new signings last week of a similar calibre in Bailey Wright, Richairo Živković and Rui Pires.

Mr Rai and Mr Kumar both added that the club’s impressive work on social media platforms have helped raise the club and the league’s appeal in the eyes of supporters.

Indeed, according to the latest statistics from the FAS, matches involving the Sailors tend to draw the highest live attendances, with an average of 1,258 fans turning up to watch their games this season.

Last Sunday (July 16), the match between Albirex Niigata (S) and Lion City Sailors attracted a crowd of 2,497 in what was a crucial match in this season’s three-horse title race between them and Tampines Rovers. 

Ultimately, like all sports, the popularity of football is inextricably tied to how it makes its fans feel.

Several young fans TODAY met spoke of a sense of “affinity” to their clubs and the sense of belonging they experience as part of a bigger community of passionate supporters, which keeps them coming back.

“Being with your support group, singing the songs and chanting the chants… being near each other skin to skin… It’s a kind of community you cannot get anywhere else if you don't come to your local games,” said a 27-year-old Tampines Rovers fan who only wanted to be known as Mr Brendon.

Geylang International fan Terence Yip, 19, told TODAY that his late grandfather used to take him to Bedok Stadium to watch the team, then known as Geylang United, and that their last game together was the RHB Singapore Cup final in 2009, where the Eagles emerged victorious in a 1-0 win over Bangkok Glass.

Such fond memories compelled him to continue his support for the club.

“He told me, ‘maybe one day you can become one of them’. So here I am with Ultras Eagles, alongside great people watching football.”

“If you don’t support (your local team), who else will?”