According to this article, we have the third highest conversion rate of supporters into members. The story should come with a caveat, though. Supporter numbers are calculated by Morgan Research so must necessarily be an estimate.

And thank goodness Collingwood supporters are so pathetic at converting that support into membership.

We wont have done ourselves any favours with another straights sets debacle.

Most MFC players couldnt hit the side of St Pauls cathedral. If a post was sticking out of the ground they would hit that instead.

I'm more interested in converting members into attendances. That would give me some confidence that we truly have 70K members, rather than 30K genuine fans and 40K pets / unborn children / donations / etc.

30 minutes ago, Deebauched said:

We wont have done ourselves any favours with another straights sets debacle.

Most MFC players couldnt hit the side of St Pauls cathedral. If a post was sticking out of the ground they would hit that instead.

We might just have a trade play that entices more members out of the woodwork. Let's wait and see.

As it stands though, no doubt some would be gunshy after how the last two years have ended.

2 hours ago, La Dee-vina Comedia said:

According to this article, we have the third highest conversion rate of supporters into members. The story should come with a caveat, though. Supporter numbers are calculated by Morgan Research so must necessarily be an estimate.

And thank goodness Collingwood supporters are so pathetic at converting that support into membership.

This comes up every year.  Because it is a survey about which team you support,  when the survey is run through NSW and QLD guess which team everyone claims to support.......surprise, surprise Sydney and Brisbane!  Those numbers are then converted into Australia wide percentages.

Trouble is in both those states, the people who are surveyed have NO interest in AFL....they just answered the survey question. 

That is why the conversion rate for both those clubs is so pathetically low at 5 & 6%. 

7 hours ago, Deebauched said:

We wont have done ourselves any favours with another straights sets debacle.

Most MFC players couldnt hit the side of St Pauls cathedral. If a post was sticking out of the ground they would hit that instead.

So you're saying the Dees players should look to learn a thing or two from the conversion rates of the supporters into members?

5 hours ago, george_on_the_outer said:

This comes up every year.  Because it is a survey about which team you support,  when the survey is run through NSW and QLD guess which team everyone claims to support.......surprise, surprise Sydney and Brisbane!  Those numbers are then converted into Australia wide percentages.

Trouble is in both those states, the people who are surveyed have NO interest in AFL....they just answered the survey question. 

That is why the conversion rate for both those clubs is so pathetically low at 5 & 6%. 

Spot on George.

23 hours ago, poita said:

I'm more interested in converting members into attendances. That would give me some confidence that we truly have 70K members, rather than 30K genuine fans and 40K pets / unborn children / donations / etc.

Well on this front we are 2nd best in the league (took this from the Useless AFL States page):

I’m not that bothered. I quite like having a whole row to ourselves in the Tridents area on a match day. Makes getting in and out for a beer very easy and short queues. 

On 9/27/2023 at 11:17 AM, titan_uranus said:

Well on this front we are 2nd best in the league (took this from the Useless AFL States page):

Let's be honest, our average home attendances are pumped up by playing other Vic clubs, in particular ANZAC eve and Kings Birthday.

What are the numbers when you look at average attendances vs interstate sides?

52 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

Let's be honest, our average home attendances are pumped up by playing other Vic clubs, in particular ANZAC eve and Kings Birthday.

What are the numbers when you look at average attendances vs interstate sides?

All things considered, we are doing extremely well

Decades in the wilderness with so many bottom 3 finishes meant that youngsters weren't going to be barracking for us.  You've gotta win

Our numbers are related to our miserable past ... 22 years without finals '65 to '86 really hurt.  As did that horror stretch from '07 to '16.  32 years of misery means we are/were coming from a long way back

However, despite all that we've now got 70,000 members and our crowd are very healthy

By contrast, the Pies seem to always be in contention thus their huge numbers ... but in reality, we are not that far being them (again, all things considered)

It's a bit of a pipe dream but 10 more years of finals with a premiership or 2 and our numbers will increase exponentially

Again, it's all about winning

On 9/27/2023 at 12:12 PM, Rab D Nesbitt said:

I’m not that bothered. I quite like having a whole row to ourselves in the Tridents area on a match day. Makes getting in and out for a beer very easy and short queues. 

Only a row....

In the AFL members I could have a section. If on level 4 one got most of the stand

1 hour ago, Macca said:

All things considered, we are doing extremely well

Decades in the wilderness with so many bottom 3 finishes meant that youngsters weren't going to be barracking for us.  You've gotta win

Our numbers are related to our miserable past ... 22 years without finals '65 to '86 really hurt.  As did that horror stretch from '07 to '16.  32 years of misery means we are/were coming from a long way back

However, despite all that we've now got 70,000 members and our crowd are very healthy

By contrast, the Pies seem to always be in contention thus their huge numbers ... but in reality, we are not that far being them (again, all things considered)

It's a bit of a pipe dream but 10 more years of finals with a premiership or 2 and our numbers will increase exponentially

Again, it's all about winning

It's also about access to grounds. At the same time that we were poor from 1965 to 1986, the Melbourne Cricket Club allowed children into the ground on what was then called a Ladies' Ticket, but only up to the age of 15. Because the old ground had a smaller members' area and the waiting list to join the MCC was so long, membership wasn't offered until people had been on the waiting list for about 20 years. Consequently, for those put onto the waiting list at birth there was a 5 year gap between turning 16 and when membership was offered. Sure, those people - and I was one - could have found other ways to get into the ground, but with the team performing poorly, there wasn't really the incentive to do so. For a while there, we just found other things to do where we were made more welcome and had more enjoyment.

On 9/26/2023 at 11:36 AM, La Dee-vina Comedia said:

According to this article, we have the third highest conversion rate of supporters into members. The story should come with a caveat, though. Supporter numbers are calculated by Morgan Research so must necessarily be an estimate.

And thank goodness Collingwood supporters are so pathetic at converting that support into membership.

The other thing I take out of that article is what a poor job the AFL have done at promoting the Giants in Sydney.

1.34 million supporters compared to 0.2 million supporters.

No doubt plenty of the 33,000 GWS supporters are free memberships given away by the AFL in an attempt to boost the actual popularity of the club.

I don't quite get it personally, as I find the Swans a boring team and GWS have probaby been close to as successful as the Swans since the introduction of GWS into the competition.  You'd think that more of the Swans supporters would have jumped over the fence to the Giants.

On 9/26/2023 at 11:36 AM, La Dee-vina Comedia said:

And thank goodness Collingwood supporters are so pathetic at converting that support into membership.

10 million morons in this country but only 106000 members. Truly atrocious.

On 9/29/2023 at 2:19 PM, Dr. Gonzo said:

Let's be honest, our average home attendances are pumped up by playing other Vic clubs, in particular ANZAC eve and Kings Birthday.

What are the numbers when you look at average attendances vs interstate sides?

I don’t know, feel free to look and find out. 

All Vic sides get big home games against other Vic sides, and home games against interstate sides. 

4 hours ago, titan_uranus said:

I don’t know, feel free to look and find out. 

All Vic sides get big home games against other Vic sides, and home games against interstate sides. 

Of course, that's what I'm saying. Look at our average home attendance vs interstate sides compared to other teams average attendance vs interstate sides and I'm sure we would be further down the list.

On 9/26/2023 at 11:48 AM, Deebauched said:

We wont have done ourselves any favours with another straights sets debacle.

Most MFC players couldnt hit the side of St Pauls cathedral. If a post was sticking out of the ground they would hit that instead.

I used to bowl at Graham Yeats in U16s. He ensured I hit the side of St Paul's on the third and fifth ball of each over.

Not sure how accurate the Swans numbers are as a lot of assumptions thrown into that. Collingwood probably does have the biggest supporter base. I hate to admit it but with yesterday’s victory you’d probably argue Collingwood has probably been the most successful club out of all the original foundation clubs given they’ve won the equal most AFL/VFL premierships and contended in the most grand finals.

 

On 9/26/2023 at 11:36 AM, La Dee-vina Comedia said:

According to this article, we have the third highest conversion rate of supporters into members. The story should come with a caveat, though. Supporter numbers are calculated by Morgan Research so must necessarily be an estimate.

And thank goodness Collingwood supporters are so pathetic at converting that support into membership.

This is excellent information and something I have often argued when people criticise Melbourne crowd sizes.

Not everyone who goes to the footy is a club member so saying X number of members and only getting a Y crowd is irrelevant, the number of supporters a club has is a better metric for comparison.

On 9/29/2023 at 6:06 PM, Rodney (Balls) Grinter said:

The other thing I take out of that article is what a poor job the AFL have done at promoting the Giants in Sydney.

1.34 million supporters compared to 0.2 million supporters.

No doubt plenty of the 33,000 GWS supporters are free memberships given away by the AFL in an attempt to boost the actual popularity of the club.

I don't quite get it personally, as I find the Swans a boring team and GWS have probaby been close to as successful as the Swans since the introduction of GWS into the competition.  You'd think that more of the Swans supporters would have jumped over the fence to the Giants.

The AFL needs to make a decision. Are the Giants the team for Western Sydney or Canberra? They can't be both. It's insulting the people of both western Sydney and the ACT as it's effectively saying we don't think either of you can support an AFL team by yourselves.

11 minutes ago, La Dee-vina Comedia said:

The AFL needs to make a decision. Are the Giants the team for Western Sydney or Canberra? They can't be both. It's insulting the people of both western Sydney and the ACT as it's effectively saying we don't think either of you can support an AFL team by yourselves.

Same could be said for North and Tassie

Should be a stat for noise made by those turning up at games. I know we've never been a loud supporter base and crowds are good enough, but the advantage both Collingwood and Carlton had against us was massive.

16 hours ago, Super Sub Schache said:

Not everyone who goes to the footy is a club member so saying X number of members and only getting a Y crowd is irrelevant, the number of supporters a club has is a better metric for comparison.

I maintain that membership is what differentiates between a "supporter" and a "barracker".
There are a helluva lot of morons out there at the moment who claim to be filth supporters, but who have never contributed a cent to "their" club.

I would say the percentage conversion is a lot lower know as we have picked up a lot more "supporters" since the 2021 GF and the presence of Trac in the team.  How long they will follow us , who knows.