Hawthorn break membership record and have Magpies in their sightsSamantha Lane
The Age
April 8, 2015 10:15pmSet to exceed 70,000 members for the first time, having achieved a record tally for a ninth consecutive year, Hawthorn say they can topple Collingwood as competition leaders with a grand target of 80,000 paid-up supporters by 2017 now more than a pipe dream.
By the first week of April - about 16 weeks before the AFL's official cut-off date for membership tallies - the reigning premiers have surpassed their benchmark of 68,650.
"There is no doubt that the gap between Hawthorn and Collingwood has reduced, as has the gap between Richmond and ourselves," Hawks CEO Stuart Fox said.
This is despite the somewhat surprising fact that about 8500 Hawthorn fans are yet to renew since the club won back-to-back premierships last year, a matter on which the club has commissioned research.
"Whilst we've never considered it to be an arms race, to be at the top of the membership ladder, there is no doubt that the gap between Hawthorn and Collingwood has reduced, as has the gap between Richmond and ourselves," Hawks CEO Stuart Fox said on Wednesday.
"We also find ourselves watching with great interest the phenomenal growth of Port Adelaide.
"I think Collingwood is always going to be tough to beat because their supporter base is massive, and I know Eddie [Maguire] loves to push the membership figures, and that's part of their club's mantra. But there's no doubt that as that gap reduces, it does make our club hungry, naturally, to go past them.
"Richmond may not be able to pass us this year, but they're probably sitting there thinking how they can pass us, just as we are thinking about how we could one day pass Collingwood."
Collingwood's membership tally sits at 70,005 while Richmond's is 66,794.It is an inexact science to compare membership tallies across the AFL given each club has tailored offerings ranging from digital subscriptions, with no match admission, that count as memberships, to traditional offerings of seating at a large number of games. Clubs can also give away "free" memberships and count them in their tallies.
Clearly aiming to suit the needs of as many people as possible, Collingwood advertises 29 offerings on the "2015 packages" page of the club's website, the majority of which count as memberships.
"We can only compare, really, from [information on] club websites and from AFL stats. So we actually don't know the make-up of every other club's membership," Fox said.
"What has always been our philosophy, though, is to really make sure our numbers are true and genuine. We don't like counting cats and dogs …and we're not counting anything else other than signed-up members."
Hawthorn, who have an in-house membership team of about 10 staff, sell three-game membership packages, but Fox described the uptake of that option as "very minimal".
The Hawks led the competition last year for junior members – it had 19,800 – and, with 18,233 already this year, expects to surpass that tally.
After an up-and-down initial five years with its Tasmanian membership base, the Hawks can also boast that they have grown that figure every year since 2007, and doubled the tally with a record figure of 8743 members in Tasmania last year. At the latest count, the Hawks' membership in Tasmania this year was 8654.
The club budgeted to sign 71,000 members in total this year, and Fox said its "stretch" target was 73,000 and now "very achievable in coming weeks".
The lofty goal of 80,000 members by 2017 was set formally in the "All for One" manifesto the club published in 2013 under the leadership of president Andrew Newbold and Fox.
"When we set that it was a reasonably realistic target, but we knew 80,000 had a little stretch in it," the CEO reflected this week.
The 2006 season now provides a remarkable reference point for the club's growth. That year, Hawthorn's total membership tally took a dive to 28,003 (the Hawks had not had a lower figure since 2000) and its Tasmanian membership hit a record low of 1971, five years into the club's push into the state.
The 1996 membership tally comparison is even starker. The year Hawthorn and Melbourne infamously came close to merging, the Hawks had a membership of 12,923.
"The growth of the Tasmanian market has been really good for us," Fox said.
"And since '06 there has obviously been some confidence around on-field success … we've also had a really strong engagement program. We've always worked from the philosophy that the fan, and the member, comes first."
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