A good article about the dodginess of membership tallies ... The truth about cats and dogsDAN SILKSTONE
May 15, 2010AFL memberships are booming and the AFL could not be more delighted. Nor could Frank and Rocky Derango, both of Kew and both signed-up Brisbane Lions members for 2010.
But behind the dazzling numbers, it can be hard to figure out what is really going on: the truth, if you like, about cats and dogs and AFL club memberships.
Two-year-old pug Rocky is a Lions member, a privilege for which owner Frank - himself a member for more than a decade - paid $40. ''He sits and watches the games with me, he is as passionate as they come,'' says Frank, 33.
But while Rocky is included in the figure of 27,981 members supplied to The Age by Brisbane - and most likely the figure pitched to potential club sponsors - he is not counted by the AFL.
Others are. The traditional 11-game membership is now merely an option among a suite of choices. As clubs such as Hawthorn and Collingwood post membership figures of more than 50,000 - undreamed of until fairly recently - at least part of that growth can be ascribed to the rise of minor memberships, such as three and four-game packages.
Asked how many members they have, many clubs offered different sets of figures.
Collingwood said it had 55,519 ''match-day members'', a figure that includes thousands of three-match memberships.
The AFL now includes memberships of three-games or more in its official statistics. These are the ones Andrew Demetriou was talking about recently when he announced record club membership across the league.
Most clubs now keep two sets of figures - matchday memberships and non-matchday. Those that officially count and those that do not.
At the time of asking, Essendon had 39,310 members. Of those, fewer than half - just over 14,000 - were the 11-home-game packages that once constituted the bulk of club memberships. Among the remainder are five-game members, seven-game members and 10-game members. The Bombers also had 9643 ''non-matchday members''. These are membership types that do not officially count and yet are counted for bragging purposes.
The Swans membership of 31,866 includes fewer than 20,000 of the old-fashioned member types with more than 7000 Sydney fans having three-game memberships. North Melbourne have only about 8000 11-game members.
Geelong also added three-game memberships this year and more than 1000 Cats fans have taken them up. In addition, the Cats offer Melbourne four-game and country five-game memberships, which count towards their overall tally.
Within football there are whispers about some clubs offering memberships to sponsors in contra deals that beef up membership figures artificially. Collingwood is the example given most frequently, with representatives of three clubs suggesting the Magpies had given away significant numbers of three-game memberships to Westpac staff as part of a new naming rights sponsorship for their Swan Street training base.
''It's pretty shameless the way they've done it,'' one club official said. ''I'd be surprised if they are the only ones but the scale of it is impressive.'' A top man from another club agreed: "It's not unusual. A lot of clubs are doing it and the benefits are obvious," he said. ''We don't run around like some clubs handing out a thousand memberships to sponsors here and there."
Collingwood admitted to The Age that memberships were included in the Westpac deal but would not say how many.
''We won't divulge confidential agreements with sponsors other than to say that Collingwood has always included memberships in its sponsorship and corporate packages,'' a spokesman said. The club emphatically denied that memberships were ''given away'' but admitted that some were part of contra deals.
Asked how many members it currently had, St Kilda volunteered a figure of 38,538 at the time of asking, late last month. It sounds impressive, and potential sponsors may well be persuaded to get on board a growing club.
Would they be told, however, that this figure includes 1242 single-game memberships? That's right. The one-game membership ($55) has arrived. Officially, those people don't count towards the AFL's statistics but the 1140 St Kilda three-game members do.
All this change is partly about - as they say on TV's The Wire - ''juking the stats'', but it's also about offering enough options and sufficient flexibility to capture the maximum number of people.
At the Brisbane Lions, there are 16 different kinds of membership including pet membership and baby membership. The Lions, along with Collingwood, were pioneers of the three-game package but almost all clubs either offer them now or are preparing to. Hawthorn, with its four-game Tasmanian membership (of which there are 10,000 this year) was another leader.
Collingwood has also been able to boost membership by converting between 7000 and 8000 fans who were registered on a database for matchday tickets into three-game members, one source said. ''That was a clever move that instantly lifted their membership,'' the source at a rival club said.
Essendon will launch its inaugural three-game membership later this month. Port Adelaide, Richmond and others are following suit. "It gives you a second wave of your membership drive," Bombers CEO Ian Robson said. "At this point now, sales of the traditional 11-game membership would be petering out.We have packaged together three home games late in the season and now we get a second membership drive. We are looking to capture those supporters who - for one reason or another - have not signed up.''
The newer membership-lite options also reduce the "churn rate" of those who fail to renew. And they give club databases the details of supporters who can be targeted in future for upgrading to full memberships. The AFL says its research shows the explosion in small-scale memberships is attracting new fans rather than cannibalising 11-game members.
"The clubs are happy because it is a PR boost and it improves the pitch you are making to sponsors," said one club executive. "The league is happy too because it makes things look all that bit healthier."
http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/the-truth-about-cats-and-dogs-20100514-v4od.html
