Gold Award: Part One

AMIDST the dramatic end to Argyle’s Sky Bet League One campaign, it was announced that the club became one of only nine member clubs to have achieved Gold Award status in the EFL’s 2019 Family Excellence Scheme.

The scheme represents the EFL’s commitment to make attending football matches a more family-friendly experience, which is also firmly in-line with Argyle’s Vision and Values. In the 12 years that the award has been in operation, the club has achieved Family Excellence status 10 times – having missed out twice in 2011 and 2012 largely as a result of issues caused by administration.

This year, though, is the first time in the club’s history that it has won the exclusive Gold Award. The first of a three-part series, we delve deep into ten different categories that make up the EFL assessors’ report on Argyle’s match-day experience for families. Today, First Impressions, Social Media and The Journey.

First impressions

This includes factors on how helpful is the club website, as well as how helpful the staff members were when the assessors purchased a match ticket. In this area, the club scored 9/10 from the EFL Assessor, and 8/10 from the family. The guest family were left with a very good first impression, saying: “Things were operationally smooth, personally welcoming and full of useful information.”

Social Media

The club clearly makes a conscious effort to make things as easy as possible for supporters, while also keeping fans abreast of all the goings on, this was reflected in the assessors’ views following his visit, saying: “There is very active media content being released by Plymouth regarding matches and club news.”

The Journey

En-route to Home Park, the assessor was satisfied that there was “clear signage”  to direct fans to the ground, adding that, there was ”everything you would expect, including parking.”

Argyle scored an average touchpoint score of 8.31 and an overall score of nine out of 10, which was the second highest score in all of Sky Bet League One, and the fifth best in the entire EFL.

The club is proud of the results, which placed us second in League One, and fifth in the EFL overall for families’ match-day experience. That said, we are always working on ways to improve visiting Home Park, and hope to make 2019-20 even better.

Interested in sampling our award-winning match-day experience for yourself? Take advantage of our Early Bird season-ticket discount up until Wednesday, 22 May.