The Ultra’s Guide to Party Planning

Pittodrie is on fire this season - and the man behind the fan culture revolution in Aberdeen tells us about the sweat behind the spectacle

By Stephen McCormick
Supporter experience manager, Aberdeen FC

There’s not been a buzz like this around Pittodrie for a long, long time. Everyone’s talking about the team. Everybody’s talking about the atmosphere. Everybody’s looking forward to the next game. Fans are asking me: what’s happening next?

We’ll start discussing a particular home game weeks beforehand – I try to work three or four games in advance. The first step is design ideas. Maybe there will be something special that we’re trying to put together, like on Sunday, when we put on a display honouring Neil Simpson’s service to the club before the Hearts game.

After that, we need to get the materials – and get to work.

Before I got this job – Supporter Experience Manager at Pittodrie – I ran Supporters Art UK, the partner of a big firm based in Germany which works with ultras and football clubs all over Europe, providing the materials for all these incredible displays you see. They recently built a €3 million facility outside Mannheim with everything under one roof, from manufacturing to office space. That’s who we get our materials from for all the tifos and other displays you see at Pittodrie.

I was speaking with Dave Cormack, the Aberdeen chairman, for ages about possibly coming on board. This started before Covid, and of course that set everything back. By that time, I was working on displays with some of the biggest clubs in British and European football. A couple of them had spoken with me about coming on board full-time, but the Aberdeen conversation was going on in the background – and it’s different when it’s your team.

Dave and Alan Burrows, the chief executive, have been great since I joined at the start of 2024; I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for them. The club is really supportive of our ideas – whether that’s the sun-hat character we used on the opening day of the season (below), or the pyrotechnics we used recently, or the display to honour Neil’s service.

My aim is to make matchdays more of an event, more of an experience. I want people to leave the stadium feeling they have been a part of something, not just a spectator.

I don’t see the players much, but like any fan, I can see the bond between them and the support becoming stronger and stronger this season. That’s what it’s all about. Results will change at some point, but hopefully that bond lasts.

I started talking to Steven Gunn, our director of football, last season about changing the end where the team warms up, and moving them to the Red Shed, where the ultras are. When Jimmy Thelin came in as manager, I knew he would get it – the supporter culture in Sweden is amazing. That change has had a real impact in the development of the bond I’m talking about.

You can see it after the games. Everybody stays on – the players and the fans.

None of what’s happened at Pittodrie this year would have been possible without our group of volunteers. They spend hours not only on matchday, but through the week, in preparation for what we’re doing at the weekend. They are preparing the materials, making the flags, painting the banners. They do trial runs to make sure everyone knows their roles for the activation – who’s doing what for each block, every tifo, every flag, every net.

At the heart of that is the Fans Project, which was set up in the summer. They raise money for the displays, including what we did for ‘Simmy’ before the Hearts game, and they have also supported more than 40 families in the area who otherwise wouldn’t be able to come to Pittodrie.

And after the game, when everyone else has left, they are up and down the stands, collecting the materials and boxing them up so we can reuse as much as possible.

By then, everyone else is back home or in the pub talking about the game they have been to. And hopefully not just the result, but also the experience, and their part in it. I think that’s what’s happening in Aberdeen – and we’re just getting started.