Official - Now lowest ranked Vic Club for member numbers

[philtee]

8000 members have fled since 2010.
Definite failure to capitalise on membership success of Lyon era.
And our nosedive to the bottom of the table, playing not-very-accountable football, can hardly be helping the cause.

Meanwhile, Essendon is in ASADA-induced extremis, and their numbers have resoundingly gone up!

http://www.theage.com.au/afl/st-kilda-s ... 078b3.html

[citywest]

This is why I'm hoping that St Kilda play 2 home games each year in New Zealand when the initial contract expires at the end of 2017. Once we are playing 2 games per year we should be able to sign up 5,000 kiwi members by then and hopefully push up towards 10,000 by the end of the 20's. The flow on effect will be that every New Zealander that migrates to Australia will barrack for the Saints.

[SainterK]

Club should focus on unrenewed before the new market...

[dragit]

Not that unexpected… as the article mentions, the last time we were lowest was 2002.

We are a 30,000 (when bottom) 40,000 (when top) club. No point getting angsty about it.

[howlinwolf]

8000 members have fled since 2010.
Definite failure to capitalise on membership success of Lyon era.
And our nosedive to the bottom of the table, playing not-very-accountable football, can hardly be helping the cause.

Meanwhile, Essendon is in ASADA-induced extremis, and their numbers have resoundingly gone up!

http://www.theage.com.au/afl/st-kilda-s ... 078b3.html

There's a difference here.
The E'dope lemmings are more akin to James Jones,
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Jones)
and will blindly follow like black and red lemmings to the promised land. 16 flags !! ( don't ask how we got them)
Our supporters jump on for minimum out lay when a return looks promising. Then jump off quickly when we're down.
The religious freaks give everything they own,first born,sanity and self respect "irregardless" of moral or ethical standards.

I'm proudly a lifelong saints supporter.

[magnifisaint]

North Melbourne 39,060

This is the one that irks me and I find hard to swallow or believe

[saintspremiers]

Not that unexpected… as the article mentions, the last time we were lowest was 2002.

We are a 30,000 (when bottom) 40,000 (when top) club. No point getting angsty about it.

Rubbish.

Its a disgrace when nearly every other club improves and we were a top side for so long.

It's due also to poor marketing and poor player public image. We did a bad job in the PR stakes and bad job selling the club.

I believe it's better this year but a lot of dsmage to our brand has been done.

[samuraisaint]

poor public image
- north's ?
Essendon's?

give me a break. That is an excuse used by the likes of Nettlefold to cover the fact that they did a crap job. The crowd at Lenny's send off is an indication of the support we have.

Our previous president did a crap job too. never saw the guy until grand final week 2010, and even then it was a puff piece on eddie maguire, when they sang the st kilda cbc song together as they were both Old Boys.

We need to draft some exciting players again, not just 'role players' and people in well paid positions need to start earning their dough. I'm sick of it. Butterrs and Plympton were great for the club in terms of building our profile - Lowe needs to lift his game for mine.

[Mr Magic]

Until someone does an in-depth analysis of exactly what types of memberships are being counted in those numbers you may be getting a totally skewed picture.

eg, I'm sure the NM figure is 'boosted' by a significant number of Tasmania Games only Memberships

The only list that has any real significance (IMHO) and that paints an accurate picture is the total Membership $ for each club.

[gringo]

Until someone does an in-depth analysis of exactly what types of memberships are being counted in those numbers you may be getting a totally skewed picture.

eg, I'm sure the NM figure is 'boosted' by a significant number of Tasmania Games only Memberships

The only list that has any real significance (IMHO) and that paints an accurate picture is the total Membership $ for each club.

100% true, these figures are just a smoke screen. Lots of clubs like Collingwood offer a myriad of pointless memberships that swell total numbers but cost nearly as much to administer as they earn back.

[The Redeemer]

Not that unexpected… as the article mentions, the last time we were lowest was 2002.

We are a 30,000 (when bottom) 40,000 (when top) club. No point getting angsty about it.

Rubbish.

Its a disgrace when nearly every other club improves and we were a top side for so long.

It's due also to poor marketing and poor player public image. We did a bad job in the PR stakes and bad job selling the club.

I believe it's better this year but a lot of dsmage to our brand has been done.

Absolutely.

With unqualified cronies like Thompson and Burke on the Board, we will never go forward.

Furthermore, they are part of this mess so why are they still here?

[dragit]

Not that unexpected… as the article mentions, the last time we were lowest was 2002.

We are a 30,000 (when bottom) 40,000 (when top) club. No point getting angsty about it.

Rubbish.

It's not rubbish, just the facts… and you flapping your arms about moaning doesn't change it.

We've always been a smaller club & now we are on the bottom so 30,000 is around our current core base. All the marketing in the world isn't going to sway most people who already have a team & new fans probably aren't going to pick the bottom side.

The bleating on here is pathetic, Collingwood & Essendon have always had double the amount of members as us… Geelong have won 3 flags and failed to increase their members in the past 5 years… We have double the amount of members than we did last time we were on the bottom, if we can't run the club with 30,000 members then we need to re-locate or fold.

If you can talk someone into becoming a member, fantastic, if you really want to follow a big club, buy a Hawthorn membership instead.

btw, the membership figures are a furphy… the 3 day memberships and memberships given away with jumper purchases make these tallies pointless.

[plugger66]

Until someone does an in-depth analysis of exactly what types of memberships are being counted in those numbers you may be getting a totally skewed picture.

eg, I'm sure the NM figure is 'boosted' by a significant number of Tasmania Games only Memberships

The only list that has any real significance (IMHO) and that paints an accurate picture is the total Membership $ for each club.

Thats obviously true but its an out. Whatever type of members we or other clubs have we are still the lowest and we have dropped nearly 10K in the last 3 years whilst every other club has increased so it makes it even worse. North have nearly 40K members and even if 5k are Tassie only member we are still behind them. Lets be totally honest here, we stuffed up big time after such a successful era. We should have been a 45K membership we were good and kept it to 40 k when we are bad.

[Mr Magic]

Until someone does an in-depth analysis of exactly what types of memberships are being counted in those numbers you may be getting a totally skewed picture.

eg, I'm sure the NM figure is 'boosted' by a significant number of Tasmania Games only Memberships

The only list that has any real significance (IMHO) and that paints an accurate picture is the total Membership $ for each club.

Thats obviously true but its an out. Whatever type of members we or other clubs have we are still the lowest and we have dropped nearly 10K in the last 3 years whilst every other club has increased so it makes it even worse. North have nearly 40K members and even if 5k are Tassie only member we are still behind them. Lets be totally honest here, we stuffed up big time after such a successful era. We should have been a 45K membership we were good and kept it to 40 k when we are bad.

I wasn't trying to 'sugar coat' it.
Just pointing out that other than showing a 'trend' the list is not overly meaningful.
And even as a tool for showing a 'trend' it doesn't man an awful lot without publishing all/more relevant information.
What types of memberships are included?
What dollars are involved?
to name but 2 relevant questions in my mind.

Maybe our almost 40,000 membership was attained on a massive increase of Social Club members wanting to be assured of (grand) finals tickets?
If other clubs are doing similarly (guaranteeing finals tickets with certain classes of membership) it might explain why some lower clubs seem to have dramatically increased their total membership numbers?
Everybody expected, pre-season, that
We would be near the bottom
NM would be challenging for finals
WB would be improved
Melbourne would dramatically improve under Messiah Roos
Collingwood were expecting to play finals and they have limited allocations for finals tickets to be purchased by general admission
Essendope were expecting to play finals.

Having not looked at the actual list have I targeted the ones who have improved and declined?

[plugger66]

Until someone does an in-depth analysis of exactly what types of memberships are being counted in those numbers you may be getting a totally skewed picture.

eg, I'm sure the NM figure is 'boosted' by a significant number of Tasmania Games only Memberships

The only list that has any real significance (IMHO) and that paints an accurate picture is the total Membership $ for each club.

Thats obviously true but its an out. Whatever type of members we or other clubs have we are still the lowest and we have dropped nearly 10K in the last 3 years whilst every other club has increased so it makes it even worse. North have nearly 40K members and even if 5k are Tassie only member we are still behind them. Lets be totally honest here, we stuffed up big time after such a successful era. We should have been a 45K membership we were good and kept it to 40 k when we are bad.

I wasn't trying to 'sugar coat' it.
Just pointing out that other than showing a 'trend' the list is not overly meaningful.
And even as a tool for showing a 'trend' it doesn't man an awful lot without publishing all/more relevant information.
What types of memberships are included?
What dollars are involved?
to name but 2 relevant questions in my mind.

Maybe our almost 40,000 membership was attained on a massive increase of Social Club members wanting to be assured of (grand) finals tickets?
If other clubs are doing similarly (guaranteeing finals tickets with certain classes of membership) it might explain why some lower clubs seem to have dramatically increased their total membership numbers?
Everybody expected, pre-season, that
We would be near the bottom
NM would be challenging for finals
WB would be improved
Melbourne would dramatically improve under Messiah Roos
Collingwood were expecting to play finals and they have limited allocations for finals tickets to be purchased by general admission
Essendope were expecting to play finals.

Having not looked at the actual list have I targeted the ones who have improved and declined?

All logical reasons for other clubs increasing but why didnt ours over the 09 and 10 season. We should have got a much higher figure and kept it as all clubs are now increasing even if there is no logical reason. melbourne didnt have Roos last year but still had more members than us. Anyway my real point is forget what other clubs have done, its an issue for our club that we never reached our membership potential and now whilst all clubs are increasing we have lost nearly 10K members.

[dragit]

We should have been a 45K membership we were good and kept it to 40 k when we are bad.

Where are you plucking these figures from though? Seems like imaginary numbers to me…

Geelong currently have 40,000 around the same for the last 5 years… even after 3 flags.

[plugger66]

We should have been a 45K membership we were good and kept it to 40 k when we are bad.

Where are you plucking these figures from though? Seems like imaginary numbers to me…

Geelong currently have 40,000 around the same for the last 5 years… even after 3 flags.

Im plucking them from my arse. As i said i dont really care about Geelong. I actually do base the figures on something. Certainly the number we should have kept. All clubs are increasing whilst we are going the other way which makes it even worse. Try and get the figures at the start of 09 and tell me how bad it looks now. of course were going to lose members when we bottomed out but we are losing them as all other clubs are increasing them. There is only 3 other clubs I worry about and compare our position now to 09. They are WB, North and Melbourne. 2 of those 3 are still no good but their memberships are now well ahead of us. As for the 45k well I obviously guessed that but logic to me suggests we should have been able to get there with a better membership department.

[matrix]

everyone watch the port game last night
see the crowd?
the scaves?
the signs on the boundary?

see the numbers??
thats someone like kochie getting that done
ok yeah port are playing well too

but FMD he has got that club up and about in a marketing term
they have a song they play b4 the game, the crowd gets into it, the scarves are held high, the crowd singing alone

now why the hell cant we get that done at the dome?

[bigballs]

Club should focus on unrenewed before the new market...

Totally agree with you K.

Since I became a payed up member 30 years ago, I have payed my membership every year regardless of how good or bad we were the previous year and I'll continue to do so until the day I die.

It sh*ts me how people drop off as soon as we start going bad!!

[dragit]

We should have been a 45K membership we were good and kept it to 40 k when we are bad.

Where are you plucking these figures from though? Seems like imaginary numbers to me…

Geelong currently have 40,000 around the same for the last 5 years… even after 3 flags.

Im plucking them from my arse. As i said i dont really care about Geelong. I actually do base the figures on something. Certainly the number we should have kept. All clubs are increasing whilst we are going the other way which makes it even worse. Try and get the figures at the start of 09 and tell me how bad it looks now. of course were going to lose members when we bottomed out but we are losing them as all other clubs are increasing them. There is only 3 other clubs I worry about and compare our position now to 09. They are WB, North and Melbourne. 2 of those 3 are still no good but their memberships are now well ahead of us. As for the 45k well I obviously guessed that but logic to me suggests we should have been able to get there with a better membership department.

Well I don't think imagining numbers is a good way to base your expectations…

There's obviously a lot of history here and there has always been a massive separation between the bigger clubs and us. We are in the same leauge as WBD, North & Melbourne… and in practical terms we all have around the same number of members at the moment… the figures are obviously pretty flakey, but last years membership revenue figures suggest that we have more full members than the other 3. The bottom 4 clubs don't seem to have the wild fluctuations in numbers like the bigger clubs… over the past 6 or 7 years, the other 3 have barely changed membership figures, certainly no significant increase, whereas we had a big spike in 2009/2010 that matched the teams performance.


North
2014 40,000
2013 34,607
2012 33,423
2011 28,761
2010 26,953
2009 28,340
2008 29,516

Dogs
2014 31,538
2013 30,209
2012 30,007
2011 29,710
2010 32,077
2009 28,215
2008 28,306
2007 28,725

Melbourne
2014 35,802
2013 33,177
2012 35,459
2011 36,937
2010 33,358
2009 31,506
2008 32,600
2007 28,077

Us
2014 30,045
2013 32,707
2012 35,440
2011 39,276
2010 39,021
2009 31,906
2008 30,063
2007 30,394

I'll leave you and Cairnsman to argue over the percentages here, but the increases are pretty negligible, who knows how many genuine members are in North's 40,000 figure.

More interesting is that last year Hawthorn had 63,000 members yet their membership revenue was $6,300,000

Compare this to our 30,000 members which translated into $4,000,000

It shows how irrelevant the membership tally figure is.

I'm sure we could always do better, but I don't think we are miles away from expectations considering 2 horrendous years and more to come.

[Mr Magic]

[More interesting is that last year Hawthorn had 63,000 members yet their membership revenue was $6,300,000

Compare this to our 30,000 members which translated into $4,000,000

It shows how irrelevant the membership tally figure is.

I'm sure we could always do better, but I don't think we are miles away from expectations considering 2 horrendous years and more to come.

Hence my point about the relevance of the tally against the revenue earned.
I'm sure I once read there were over 10,000 Hawthorn 3 game Tasmanian members included in their total.
If true that would explain to a large extent why their average revenue is around $100 per membership whereas ours is $135

Another case of statistics being used to tell whatever narrative you want them to.

[plugger66]

Membership numbers are important though. Sponsors base the amount they will pay on the number of members. North, melbourne and the WB had less membership revenue than us last season and will agin IMO this season but we had less sponsorship then them. The figures you have provided show the problem though. We are the only club that hasnt increased our membership in the time every other club has. As I said I base our membership numbers on the bottom 4 and there is no reason from looking at those figures as to why we are so far behind melbourne, North and even the WB. Melbourne have been crap for years and the WB have fallen back down the ladder as we have.

[dragit]

They haven't increased though, dogs & Melbourne have basically the same number as 5 years ago, North appear to have jumped suddenly as they were probably expecting a top 4 finish.

[plugger66]

They haven't increased though, dogs & Melbourne have basically the same number as 5 years ago, North appear to have jumped suddenly as they were probably expecting a top 4 finish.

Well they have no reason to increase from back then. WB and Melbourne have reasons to decrease but havent. We have and by about 9k.

[plugger66]

[More interesting is that last year Hawthorn had 63,000 members yet their membership revenue was $6,300,000

Compare this to our 30,000 members which translated into $4,000,000

It shows how irrelevant the membership tally figure is.

I'm sure we could always do better, but I don't think we are miles away from expectations considering 2 horrendous years and more to come.

Hence my point about the relevance of the tally against the revenue earned.
I'm sure I once read there were over 10,000 Hawthorn 3 game Tasmanian members included in their total.
If true that would explain to a large extent why their average revenue is around $100 per membership whereas ours is $135

Another case of statistics being used to tell whatever narrative you want them to.

So numbers arent important at all? I think sponsors would totally disagree with that. from what I hear sponsors look at numbers and not revenue. What the hawks dont get in membership is made up in sponsorship. And even if we use revenue as a guide im guessing there was a bigger gap in revenue between us and the other 3 sides that are near us, 5 years ago then now. Anyway we spin it, its a bad result having the others sides ahead of us.