-18% drop in 2 years. Shocking. That is embarrassing. Seven thousand fewer members than the Bulldogs, and the Saints, who have played in one finals series in a decade and have 1 flag.

Rightly or wrongly this club has done a shocking job in maintaining membership numbers since 2021. Commercially we couldn’t sustain another poor season under Goodwin (of course we may not have had a poor 2026 under Goodwin).

To be only ahead of two expansion clubs and a woeful North is a shocking result and a massive worry for the long term financial viability of this club.

Our new CEO has a lot of work ahead of him

Diabolical, i know some of the figures are disingenuous (like I myself am 3 members) but so many club records and we're floundering.

4 minutes ago, Jaded No More said:

Rightly or wrongly this club has done a shocking job in maintaining membership numbers since 2021. Commercially we couldn’t sustain another poor season under Goodwin (of course we may not have had a poor 2026 under Goodwin).

To be only ahead of two expansion clubs and a woeful North is a shocking result and a massive worry for the long term financial viability of this club.

Our new CEO has a lot of work ahead of him

I know we have had trouble on field and in the lockroom but I would immediately be gutting the marketing and membership departments. To lose that amount only four years after a flag... that is just absolutely shocking. Really reminds me of 90s Melbourne, run like an amateur club that hasn't moved into the professional era.

I imagine signing Buckley won't prompt a bump in membership but nothing short of a trip back to finals would help. We are at real risk of falling behind North next year.

Edited September 10, 2025Sep 10 by praha

The membership dept is hopeless. My son has been a member for 7 years, and they sent him out 2nd-year member stuff. Like, the amount of money I fork over, and they can't get simple stuff like that correct!

I posted this in the pinned thread earlier, but this might be a more appropriate location.

In a year where 14 clubs achieved record membership numbers, and some increased their number by more than 10%, our result is more than 10% below our 2024 number and more than 17% off our record from 2023. That is disgraceful.

What's even worse is that, despite barely winning a game for 6 years, North is on track to surpass us next year. That would leave us as the smallest Victorian club, despite winning a premiership in the past 5 years.

What can we do about this?

• More flexible membership options, with better value provided. Every year we pay more for less. In particular we need to remove the GFG from the reserved seat package.

• Better member communications and social media presence. Engage with the supporter base. Should the club have a presence on Demonland?

• Deliver a better brand of football that people actually want to watch (more wins would be nice as well).

• Change the prevailing narrative that we are a divided and unprofessional club.

• Provide realistic opportunities for members, particularly kids, to engage with players (ie don't hold open training sessions on school days).

• Publicly advocate for the club and the players. I can't stand Chris Scott, but he never would have let the AFL get away with suspending May.

• If we are going to cop [censored] fixtures (eg West Coast @ Marvel), find a way to embrace these and deliver something of value to get people to come along.

Say what you want about West Coast, yeah, yeah… WA is a two team state, but to still average 40 odd k for home matches over the last 5 years in spite of being absolute shizen on field is credit to the club and their fans.

They seem like a well run club off field in spite of the onfield dramas. Can’t begrudge them for that despite how much they are primarily despised on the east coast.

Collingwood as well. To average 60k and to have 50+ consistently turn up against the likes of Fremantle is something the Melbourne football club can only dream of.

Edited September 10, 2025Sep 10 by VNightCityLegend

That is woeful 😂 Four years after a premiership having those numbers is insane

Glad this conversation has moved down off the pinned thread.

It needs to be front and centre.

It’s an absolute disaster. And with North and St Kilda increasing, we can’t just stick our heads in the sand and say “well that’s what you get for missing finals”.

This is broader than just poor on-field performance, which of course will have contributed.

Called it in May that we’d struggle to surpass 60k members this year.

The rusted ons always renew, but after a disappointing end to 2024 and the tripe we served up this year, our fickle base of supporters needn’t another reason to let their membership lapse.

The NT deal used to inflate our member numbers as they "paid" a decent chunk of the price of the Darwin game in the form of 3 game memberships.

That being said a few years ago overtaking Carlton was a faint possibility now we're not only back with the pack we're below all but North.

I don't pay much attention to raw membership numbers as they are impacted by child and limited game memberships etc. What is real however are relative numbers.

Love to see a ten year line graph comparing all the Melbourne clubs

is anyone actually surprised?

also, i would be more curious to see revenue from membership vs total membership - the latter is very rubbery in terms of calculated figures

we're a small club with the team towards the bottom of the ladder; we might be at the bottom of the ladder for membership totals, but we are mid-table for crowd attendance:

7 minutes ago, Diamond_Jim said:

Love to see a ten year line graph comparing all the Melbourne clubs

This misses lots of clubs and stops at 2020, but I still found it really interesting: https://thecityjournal.net/data-journalism-2021/afl-memberships-through-history/

average attendances from 2000, a grand final year, to 2025:

On a related note, we again rank 2nd for average home attendance as a percentage of members (Fremantle 1st):

https://www.instagram.com/p/DOavttfEqTx/?igsh=cDA4MjJ6bHZ6bG1j

Clubs create all sorts of ways to boost their “membership” numbers. There’s been mentions on here of local junior clubs getting free memberships. In which parallel universe does GWS have close to 40k members? There’s barely 4K of their own supporters at any of their home games.

Let’s bring back to excitement

And yeah, the membership and communications departments need a kick to improve dramatically in 2026

More surveys anyone 😭😭😭

Every junior in a Geelong football league gets a free Cats Membership. I assume this happens across all teams but certainly inflates the numbers.

I don’t think the drop off in our numbers is totally a reflection on the teams playing style. Even if you don’t believe the media, there was a barrage of negative about the club throughout last year and the off season. A top 5 player wanted to leave, another in some sort of breakdown, a board and executive in court battles or just general infighting. The list goes on. It certainly was a hard time to be a proud Demon. Follow that up with a poor win loss record, an interim leadership and what seems to be nothing implemented from a review and you get a drop off. And lastly unless you’re in the mcc or coterie who knows what’s happening around the club or where it’s going.

20 hours ago, praha said:

-18% drop in 2 years. Shocking. That is embarrassing. Seven thousand fewer members than the Bulldogs, and the Saints, who have played in one finals series in a decade and have 1 flag.

The people who are accountable for this shocking mess is the board of management. They must be held to account

What an absolute farce Sack the board and renew this club.

Boring football = low memberships.

Especially after success, then add in all the rest of the crud and I'm surprised we have that many members.

Starting 0-5 would have cost thousands of memberships. We also have the MCC disadvatage.

Paul Guerra has just come from an organisation that only exists because of membership. He needs to find a way to bring previous memners back and attract new ones.

11 hours ago, titan_uranus said:

On a related note, we again rank 2nd for average home attendance as a percentage of members (Fremantle 1st):

https://www.instagram.com/p/DOavttfEqTx/?igsh=cDA4MjJ6bHZ6bG1j

Rubbish statistics........Average is because clubs play other sides.

Play Collingwood twice and your average goes up, without a single extra Melbourne supporter turning up.

Loss of members in a year = higher average, because of simple arithmetic.

Why is Geelong so low?.....lack of seating at their ground.

Why is WCE so low? High membership numbers compared to what they can fit in the ground. Same as Geelong.

Edited September 10, 2025Sep 10 by george_on_the_outer

4 minutes ago, george_on_the_outer said:

Rubbish statistics........Average is because clubs play other sides.

Play Collingwood twice and your average goes up, without a single extra Melbourne supporter turning up.

Loss of members in a year = higher average, because of simple arithmetic.

Why is Geelong so low?.....lack of seating at their ground.

play a home game in front of less than 10k in the alice and yr average comes tumbling down...

i think in terms of importance it's the membership revenue $$ >> % of home attendance : membership #s >> actual membership #s