AFL on verge of cracking one million membersPaul Crawley & Greg Denham
The Australian
16 June 2018The AFL competition is poised to create history by achieving a record combined membership this year of more than one million people.
With 980,000 AFL and club memberships locked in, including almost 180,000 new members, the league will establish a new benchmark some time next month. The league is understood to have based expectations that it will attract its 1,000,000th member on the usual annual sales rush in July.
The AFL’s 18th consecutive membership record has surpassed expectations after a 3 per cent increase last year enabled it to break 900,000 for the first time, when 907,562 people signed up for membership. Ten of the 18 clubs broke their membership records and eight clubs had memberships of more than 50,000.
The clubs that last season improved on their 2016 membership figure were Adelaide, Essendon, Geelong, Greater Western Sydney, Hawthorn, Melbourne, Richmond, St Kilda, Sydney and the Western Bulldogs, with West Coast set to have record numbers this season. The inaugural AFL Women’s League membership tally of 7191 was included in last year’s overall figures.
Last year, AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan said the popularity of the game had never been greater and boasted that “one in every 27 Australians is now a member of an AFL club”. As of next month, one in every 25 Australians will officially be AFL or club members.
This year’s 11 per cent increase of overall memberships has partly been through the resurgence of Richmond as a football powerhouse. The 2017 premiers could become the first sporting club in the southern hemisphere to have a membership of more than 100,000.
Unexpected demand had Tigers membership tracking towards 96,000 yesterday, which is already a remarkable increase on last year’s record of 72,669. The club, which had targeted 90,000 this season, believes it will go close to achieving six figures before next month’s cut-off.
Richmond, who have grown rank-and-file numbers for the past eight consecutive years, have signed up more than 25,000 new members since last year’s grand final. Before this year, no club had ever broken the 80,000-membership barrier. Collingwood, who had 75,879 members last year, went close in 2014 with 79,347.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/sport/afl/afl-on-verge-of-cracking-one-million-members/news-story/6f52049e5262aeadf24a8f18213ba6b6
