If I was a major company looking to sponsor an AFL team, the last thing I'd probably look at is membership numbers.
Membership demographic and how this matched my product would be first and foremost.
Then I'd be looking at number of people attending games and the subsequent likelihood of media exposure (big games, especially Friday night).
Hawthorn can bulltwang about how many members they have all they want. Their crowd numbers suggest they do not have the membership they claim to have. Any team that accepts a lucrative deal to play in Tassie just to get the money isn't all it is cracked up to be, pure and simple. They can pretend it is about market penetration, but the Tassie deal pretty much keeps them afloat.