Bradford City AFC has made the difficult decision to discontinue its official matchday programme, from the beginning of the 2022/23 campaign.
Starting from this weekend’s friendly against Derby County (Saturday July 9), The Parader - which has been produced in partnership with Curtis Sport for the past five years - will be retired following extensive internal consideration.
City’s director of brand, marketing and media, Luke Flacks, said: “This decision has been an extremely difficult one to make. Buying a matchday programme is a long-standing tradition in the English game, but in a more digitally-minded era with the rise of social media and online content, we feel as a club it is no longer efficient for us to continue producing a matchday programme.
“While The Parader remains a popular product among sections of our supporter base, concerns have grown significantly over its financial viability.
“For the last two seasons which have seen supporters able to attend fixtures in person, the product’s creation of financial income has considerably declined, with sales in 2021/22 significantly down.
“Furthermore, as part of our attempts to become a greener organisation, we feel the production of a programme in its energy consumption, ink and paper usage is an unnecessary output in our increased sustainability efforts.
“We appreciate this move will come as a disappointment to a number supporters young and old, though having carefully examined the pros and cons of each eventuality, we feel we have made the most suitable decision.
“Discontinuing The Parader provides a greater opportunity for us to focus on delivering more exciting and exclusive, up-to-date content across other channels over the course of a season, including our official Bradford City app, and our City Talk newsletter which currently reaches over 25,000 of you each month.
“We would like to take this opportunity to thank our friends at Curtis Sport for their fantastic work in producing what we hope has proved an enjoyable and worthwhile product throughout the past five seasons, as well as the countless contributors who have helped make The Parader over the years, and the many sellers based at Valley Parade who have ensured you have been able to pick up a copy on matchday.”
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