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I’ve noticed in the past month or so, a particular advertisement appearing on Fox Sports encouraging all rugby league fans to purchase memberships for the forthcoming year.
This reminds me that about a year ago, Jacquelin Magnay wrote in the SMH about some of the financial problems being experienced by a few of the Sydney-based rugby league clubs.
In that article, and subsequently in the ABC’s Offsiders program, she mentioned the need for rugby league clubs to commence emulating the AFL clubs in attracting financial members.
Around this time, Magnay also referred to discussions that she had with the management of the Wests Tigers, where they mentioned their intention to look to Collingwood for creative ideas in boosting membership numbers.
The differences in their respective figures are quite stark.
Wests has a total membership of 4,000 odd and an annual income of some $12 million. Collingwood has now breached the 40,000 mark in memberships (only four or five AFL clubs are up around that number) and its annual revenue would be at least triple that of Wests.
This NRL ad on Fox Sports has got me thinking about the fundamentals of club memberships in Australia.
The large club memberships that exist amongst many of the AFL clubs is a factor behind the wealth generated by Australian Football in this country, and it makes sense that the NRL (and other codes) would want to tread a similar path.
But at the end of the day, the success or otherwise of selling memberships depends on a number of factors, including:
1. the sporting culture of the followers of a particular code, and/or of the city where a particular code might be dominant; and
2. the numbers of fans of a particular club to begin with.
In relation to the last point, clubs like Collingwood and Essendon have a massive pool of fans to draw from. In all probability, less than ten percent will be financial members at any one time – but it’s the sheer numbers to begin with that drive the success of the membership drive.
As some fall off from year to year, there are plenty to take their places.
Going back to the Wests Tigers example, the question arises: what is the number of people within the Sydney basin who claim to be a Wests Tigers fan, and are they inclined towards paying a lump sum at the start of every season to watch most home games?
In understanding the mechanics of memberships, we have to understand that we’re not just talking about someone at the water cooler on a Monday morning with a passing interest in the game claiming to be a fan for the sake of social conversation. We’re talking about someone so committed to the team that they are willing to put their money where their mouth is at the start of most seasons.
For whatever reason, the bigger AFL clubs have a large amount of these sorts of fans.
Added to that, a city like Melbourne has a culture of memberships going back a long way.
This is something that the Melbourne Victory has been able to trade on, and as a consequence it has far and away the largest number of memberships amongst the A-League clubs. According to management, about half of all Victory members are AFL members of one type or another.
In an unexpected twist, it could well be that ultimately the Storm will do better than its Sydney counterparts, precisely because of the prevailing sporting culture in the city in which it resides.
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