Note that the marketing execs over at Pieland have had the luxury of having a club president regularly dropping the name of every club sponsor of theirs in prime time on the most popular FTA TV network. No other club can compete in offering that sort of mass media exposure to sponsors.
Remember before Eddie took over the presidency the Pies in 1999 only had a membership of just 24,000 (5,000 less than us at the time) and had made a $1 million loss. Now their membership is up around 38,000 and they're making $2 million profits. All the credit goes to Eddie for that. Making back-to-back Grand Finals was a major factor as well of course.
A stable well-managed admin still needs on-field success to drive the numbers up significantly. Everyone loves a winner and to be associated with one whether they are sponsors or supporters. Just look at the turnaround in the Cats and Saints off-field fortunes in the past 5 years. Merchandise-wise, the Saints would be well ahead of us. I remember last year or the year before hearing that they ran out of stock at one stage such was the demand by kids wanting to wear a No. 26 guernsey (Dal Santo).
We've paid dearly for having two decades of being the worst performed Victorian club in an era where professionalism in all areas on and off-field (and the $$$ and support that come with it) has cemented itself. Sheesh we'd be the biggest bloody club in the country if we had had Essendon's record in that time. It's a credit to the loyalty and passion of our supporters that we've survived and remained reasonably popular given the last 25 years. Most other Victorian clubs would be dead by now with a similar recent history. It's going to take a few years of prolonged success to return to the big club we once were. A number of our supporters have been burnt by too many false dawns.
