The race to be the first club to 100,000 members

[Hard Roar Tiger]

Whilst it might not be a race there is an advantage in having the highest membership when seeking major sponsors as well as considerations in the home and away draw.

We went past the bums on seats membership base several years ago. It will become increasingly harder for the rank and file to get GF and finals tickets unless you can pay the high $

Have a look at the big soccer clubs in Europe. They have well over 100,000 members and some like FC Barcelona have closed their membership.

These days in the internet world membership don't necessarily have to mean tickets to games. The club could build a media arm and membership entitles the member to view Richmond centric information. Similar to how the media outlets ate using paywalls to block content to non-paying readers

100,000 members each spending $1 a day on average brings in $36.5million.

That is absolutely correct. From my perspective this is more than a peeing contest and on a personal level i dont give a crap - we all know we have a much much bigger supporter base. But it grinds my gears that the hawks have an MO to be the number 1 membership side year in year out so they can utilise and bargain this position of strength with sponsors, and to achieve this, a number of very well off supporters buy in bulk each year, so yes, they are real memberships bought and paid for, but theyre not real people, probably why their membership areas are never full even though they are number 1 supposedly 

As well as their pets being members.......

They also have 10k in Tassie members so if we just look at it from A Victorian members perspective they are behind a few clubs

[Rampsation]

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).

Most of that is true but you wouldn't traditionally link say Bang & Olufsen with Richmond. I think that sponsorship means that our
branding can go a bit upscale in time and that we can make inroads with brands usually associated with higher income earners.