Memberships 2019 St.Kilda Membership Thread (FINAL TALLY 42,910)

[st_trav_ofWA]

Without being rude the amount of wa fans has little bearing on the total numbers. Just look at the numbers after 3 grand finals in 2 years. Very ordinary. And I live in a saints area and can assure you it’s no where near as big of a saints area as 20 years ago. Not even close

the location of the fans is not the point the point is the type of fans that we have ...
lets put it this way if you had footy fans rank their following of the club on a scale of 1 to 10 pretty much all of us on here would be at that 9 to 10 rank in that scale yes we would have possibly the lowest number or people following the club at that scale in the AFL , in the scale of say 6 to 10 i reckon we would have the lower end of all clubs but if we were to look at the fans who would rate themselves 1 to 6 in the level of supporting the club i reckon you would find we would have one of if not the largest ammount of fans ... its like they say you never meet a "somewhat" collingwood supporter they either are or they aint for us the have a huge number of people who are "somewhat" supporters these are people who unless you spoke to them you wouldnt even know they liked footy let alone the saints ... its in this area where we have to work at getting them from being a casual observer to being a serious follower ... winning games will help that...
as for a grand final years we had thousands come out of the woodwook as fans the problem is we did absoulutly nothing to capture them as long term supporters so when we wend down again off the scurried out of the picture ..

 

[st_trav_ofWA]

Got memvbership figures to prove it. As stated in the last post you can tell the numbers have dropped off just by being involved in local footy in the biggest saints area in Australia. Apart from you saying it’s wrong do you have any slight proof

ok so your local footy comp doesnt have a high number of saints fans so logically you will say we dont have a huge following .. is that how you are making your observation ?
if so i can explain that easily ...
the largest number of our "fans" are not involved in footy at all.. the big numbers where we have supporters are not the type who are joining local footy club they are not footy fanatics who live and breath footy .. they are the ones who will occasionally watch a game if its on FTA they are the people who havent been to a footy game in years , they are the people who have never been to a VFL game let alone a local footy game ...
these are the people we have millions of ... Richmond also had the same type of people the differance is they as a club realised this early and targeted them early so by the time they got some sort of success they were HUGE ... from what i can tell we are following a similar path..

 

[plugger66]

Got supporter base figures to prove it?

Can go on all day, but I won't entertain it. I have seen the figures in 2015 first hand. You are wrong.

Information that I have seen is club confidential document, it doesn't get released to the public. If you don't believe me that's OK.

Ok I won’t believe it until the figures prove you wrong. I choose to deal in facts on memberships. At the moment facts have us clearly in the bottom 4 in Victoria. Not sure where you live but I can see first hand the less support for the saints and that happens with today’s kids who want instant success. Back in my day that wasn’t as important.

 

[plugger66]

ok so your local footy comp doesnt have a high number of saints fans so logically you will say we dont have a huge following .. is that how you are making your observation ?
if so i can explain that easily ...
the largest number of our "fans" are not involved in footy at all.. the big numbers where we have supporters are not the type who are joining local footy club they are not footy fanatics who live and breath footy .. they are the ones who will occasionally watch a game if its on FTA they are the people who havent been to a footy game in years , they are the people who have never been to a VFL game let alone a local footy game ...
these are the people we have millions of ... Richmond also had the same type of people the differance is they as a club realised this early and targeted them early so by the time they got some sort of success they were HUGE ... from what i can tell we are following a similar path..

You do get upset easily. I love how a person in wa can tell me who lives in the saints biggest area how it all works in Victoria. As if I’m basing it only on a local footy club. God help the children.

As for your comment about what our supporters are like please don’t make me laugh. How would know from 300km away. I don’t even know that and I’m in the biggest area. I’m doubting it to be true anyway especially when talking kids which is the future. We aren’t going to get older people now if they still aren’t members. And we have millions of supporters. Pull the other. We wouldn’t have a quarter of a million. Forget memberships and look at crowd figures between us and tigers when we are going well compared to them and when we are going poorly compared to them. Unfortunately not in the same league.

 

[George]

Ok I won’t believe it until the figures prove you wrong. I choose to deal in facts on memberships. At the moment facts have us clearly in the bottom 4 in Victoria. Not sure where you live but I can see first hand the less support for the saints and that happens with today’s kids who want instant success. Back in my day that wasn’t as important.

You're talking about memberships I'm talking about supporter base. And if we're talking about supporter base, once again, you are wrong.

 

[plugger66]

You're talking about memberships I'm talking about supporter base. And if we're talking about supporter base, once again, you are wrong.

So where are these supporter base figures. I’ve seen them previously and we are still in the bottom few. Why are our members different and don’t join? Why are we always unlucky.

 

[George]

So where are these supporter base figures. I’ve seen them previously and we are still in the bottom few. Why are our members different and don’t join? Why are we always unlucky.

Losing flags, shutting the supporters out during dominant years, perennial underachievers. Plenty of reasons.

The figures are in the top drawer in Matt Finnis' office. I would've taken a picture of them for everyone to see but it would've looked weird with him sitting there explaining the document to me.

 

[plugger66]

Losing flags, shutting the supporters out during dominant years, perennial underachievers. Plenty of reasons.

The figures are in the top drawer in Matt Finnis' office. I would've taken a picture of them for everyone to see but it would've looked weird with him sitting there explaining the document to me.

So the tigers. Are these our figures? Ok. Liberal party polls had the close in the last state election.

 

[st_trav_ofWA]

You do get upset easily. I love how a person in wa can tell me who lives in the saints biggest area how it all works in Victoria. As if I’m basing it only on a local footy club. God help the children.

As for your comment about what our supporters are like please don’t make me laugh. How would know from 300km away. I don’t even know that and I’m in the biggest area. I’m doubting it to be true anyway especially when talking kids which is the future. We aren’t going to get older people now if they still aren’t members. And we have millions of supporters. Pull the other. We wouldn’t have a quarter of a million. Forget memberships and look at crowd figures between us and tigers when we are going well compared to them and when we are going poorly compared to them. Unfortunately not in the same league.

firstly im far from upset old friend ... i can see how you are basing your assumption but i can also see where you are looking at it with tunnel vission... I do live in WA but i do take a very special interest in membership and i do have information supplied to me about membership numbers so i do have a little bit of knowllege on the subject (not as much as George does but a little ) see unlike you i have been at the club as a leader of a supporter group, i have seen snippets of the document George speaks of i have seen snippets of the figures returned to the club from the fan surveys over the year.. you know that yearly thing you get sent from the club that has a question on it every year asking you on a scale of 1-10 how do you see yourself as a supporter..

i think the thing you are getting caught up in is the number of dedicated supporters that we are clearly well behind in.. of course our game day attendances are low even our dedicated members dont show up .. of course our membership numbers are low we dont have the amount of supporters who are commited to the club enough to make the investment into a membership ... the figures do show that we do in fact have a large suporter base who are not engaged with the club the comes from figures obtained from the AFL's research .. speaking to Peter Summers a while back its something that the AFL has highlighted to our club the fact we do have a significant supporter base that is very much disporpotional to our membership numbers - why would Peter lie about that to me ? he wouldnt so i believe the information he has told me ...
by all means believe what you want to , base your opinion on the fact the people you see in local footy are not saints fans (something i dont doubt) but the picture is much much bigger than that

 

[George]

So the tigers. Are these our figures? Ok. Liberal party polls had the close in the last state election.

There's a detailed video explaining exactly how Richmond grew their supporter base. If someone can find it I'd love to re-watch it. I always say this but back in 2010 we had more members than they did, they only had about 30,000. One flag got them a 30,000 increase, but the rest? They went about it the right way.

As for the figures they are league issued figures. It had every club on there and their market size, latent supporter base, supporter demographic, etc etc...it had a lot of stuff on it.

 

[plugger66]

firstly im far from upset old friend ... i can see how you are basing your assumption but i can also see where you are looking at it with tunnel vission... I do live in WA but i do take a very special interest in membership and i do have information supplied to me about membership numbers so i do have a little bit of knowllege on the subject (not as much as George does but a little ) see unlike you i have been at the club as a leader of a supporter group, i have seen snippets of the document George speaks of i have seen snippets of the figures returned to the club from the fan surveys over the year.. you know that yearly thing you get sent from the club that has a question on it every year asking you on a scale of 1-10 how do you see yourself as a supporter..

i think the thing you are getting caught up in is the number of dedicated supporters that we are clearly well behind in.. of course our game day attendances are low even our dedicated members dont show up .. of course our membership numbers are low we dont have the amount of supporters who are commited to the club enough to make the investment into a membership ... the figures do show that we do in fact have a large suporter base who are not engaged with the club the comes from figures obtained from the AFL's research .. speaking to Peter Summers a while back its something that the AFL has highlighted to our club the fact we do have a significant supporter base that is very much disporpotional to our membership numbers - why would Peter lie about that to me ? he wouldnt so i believe the information he has told me ...
by all means believe what you want to , base your opinion on the fact the people you see in local footy are not saints fans (something i dont doubt) but the picture is much much bigger than that

Every club has huge amount of supporters who don’t buy memberships. Forgetting last year our footy was on a big upward trend but the memberships didn’t really improve. Why is that. Facts are memberships aren’t great and crowds are very ordinary. Surely if we have a huge base the they should convert many more to members. I’m not doubting we didn’t have a great base who weren’t members but that was years ago. Everything I’ve see in the area suggests we are no where near those numbers these days. And crowds and membership numbers completely support that.

 

[st_trav_ofWA]

So where are these supporter base figures. I’ve seen them previously and we are still in the bottom few. Why are our members different and don’t join? Why are we always unlucky.

its not unlucky.... luck has nothing to do with it at all its the fact we shot ourselves in the foot with a stupid bubble mentality when we had the chance to make a huge impact ... its the fact for almost a decade we treated the supporters as a hinderance not an integral part of our success ...
look at the Tigers how they got agressive at bringing in members ... again ill mention what they did in WA as an example only but when they were targeting members in WA they focused on familys holding footy clinics in WA , sending retired players to functions in WA to ingrain that love of their club to their supporters ... Richmond are the blue print for it what they did and the work they continue to do to secure members is second to none hence they now have 100K members ... the thing is ti cost money and it takes resources and it needs buy in from the top down in the club ... it takes former champions to be spokesmen, it takes openess from the club and then to top it off it takes good exciting footy and winning footy ....
where we failed before in 09 & 10 we had only the winning footy and none of the rest ... it takes more than just winning

 

[plugger66]

its not unlucky.... luck has nothing to do with it at all its the fact we shot ourselves in the foot with a stupid bubble mentality when we had the chance to make a huge impact ... its the fact for almost a decade we treated the supporters as a hinderance not an integral part of our success ...
look at the Tigers how they got agressive at bringing in members ... again ill mention what they did in WA as an example only but when they were targeting members in WA they focused on familys holding footy clinics in WA , sending retired players to functions in WA to ingrain that love of their club to their supporters ... Richmond are the blue print for it what they did and the work they continue to do to secure members is second to none hence they now have 100K members ... the thing is ti cost money and it takes resources and it needs buy in from the top down in the club ... it takes former champions to be spokesmen, it takes openess from the club and then to top it off it takes good exciting footy and winning footy ....
where we failed before in 09 & 10 we had only the winning footy and none of the rest ... it takes more than just winning

I agree about that period but with this huge supporter base where are the members now. We now interact better with members and before last year we’re on a pretty big upward trend but it didn’t close to show in memberships. I reckon our supporter base is a lot worse than 10 years ago and that explains the ordinary member numbers.

 

[st_trav_ofWA]

Every club has huge amount of supporters who don’t buy memberships. Forgetting last year our footy was on a big upward trend but the memberships didn’t really improve. Why is that. Facts are memberships aren’t great and crowds are very ordinary. Surely if we have a huge base the they should convert many more to members. I’m not doubting we didn’t have a great base who weren’t members but that was years ago. Everything I’ve see in the area suggests we are no where near those numbers these days. And crowds and membership numbers completely support that.

the informatin the AFL supplied to clubs shows that is not correct ... im not sure where you get your figures from year on year we have increased the membership numbers since our last spoon (this year not looking great though) so we aremaking headway into it but as i mentiond before its not a quick process to build a membership from a supporter base... winning a flag would for sure give you a "sugar rush" increase but that would have a tendancy to fall away once you are not winning a flag, our task is to build the emotional connection so when we do convert the supporter into a member they stick with us through good times and bad .. thats a much much harder task ...

its not by accident the marketing the club has taken on .. the Linton Street doco's , the engagment with former stars (G-train) , the social media post of our past .... we are trying to build nostalgia it would not suprise me if the next focus is on kids

 

[st_trav_ofWA]

I agree about that period but with this huge supporter base where are the members now. We now interact better with members and before last year we’re on a pretty big upward trend but it didn’t close to show in memberships. I reckon our supporter base is a lot worse than 10 years ago and that explains the ordinary member numbers.

for lack of a better description they are playing hard to get .... fact is we burnt them as a club.. when they came to us we didnt welcome them so its going to take more than a couple of years of good faith to win that trust back and while we are not winning game its not as attractive at the moment ... its not a quick fix

 

[plugger66]

for lack of a better description they are playing hard to get .... fact is we burnt them as a club.. when they came to us we didnt welcome them so its going to take more than a couple of years of good faith to win that trust back and while we are not winning game its not as attractive at the moment ... its not a quick fix

Ok you say we burnt members but ive been a member for about 30 years and apart from getting a cap or scarf for last 10 years it seems no different. I actually don't get what members want. Surely its a donation anyway. And in your last post you said numbers are going up which they are but lets be honest here. The AFL change what is a member just about every year so it looks like more people are following the game. I still ask if all the problems with memberships are fixed and we have this huge supporter base where was the big increase in the previous 2 years when the side was on a pretty big upward trend. Im doubting this huge supporter base now. I wouldn't have doubted it 10 to 20 years ago.

 

[70s sainter]

Member numbers should be based on the amount of membership dollars coming into the club - it’s as simple as that .
It’s the only way to get accurate numbers.
However total membership revenue doesn’t have the same ring to it or the bragging rights .

 

[st_trav_ofWA]

Ok you say we burnt members but ive been a member for about 30 years and apart from getting a cap or scarf for last 10 years it seems no different. I actually don't get what members want. Surely its a donation anyway. And in your last post you said numbers are going up which they are but lets be honest here. The AFL change what is a member just about every year so it looks like more people are following the game. I still ask if all the problems with memberships are fixed and we have this huge supporter base where was the big increase in the previous 2 years when the side was on a pretty big upward trend. Im doubting this huge supporter base now. I wouldn't have doubted it 10 to 20 years ago.

you are confusing member and supporter again ...
we burnt supporters by not being open with them , we burnt them by not engaging with them in the thought that "as long as we win games they will be happy" ... the issue is when we had our moment in the sun we locked everyone out , even to the point where we had the media locked aout from our club so while we were having our greatest period instead of our club being up in lights we were treating the media as the enemy (in part it was justified)

 

[st_trav_ofWA]

Member numbers should be based on the amount of membership dollars coming into the club - it’s as simple as that .
It’s the only way to get accurate numbers.
However total membership revenue doesn’t have the same ring to it or the bragging rights .

the cost varies though .... for WA members its cheaper to be a saints member then it is to be a geelong or carlton member so revenue isnt a true indication plus sponsors (who realistically is what we use membership numbers to attract ) dont care how much we make from members they just want the gross number of people their brand will be exposed to

 

[plugger66]

Member numbers should be based on the amount of membership dollars coming into the club - it’s as simple as that .
It’s the only way to get accurate numbers.
However total membership revenue doesn’t have the same ring to it or the bragging rights .

Glad you brought this up. Ive said for the last few years membership numbers mean nothing as the AFL keep making it easier to be a member so it looks like more people are following the game. Ive found the revenue for memberships for most of the last few years and its interesting reading. It does include reserved seating as well.

2.9 million in18
3.7 in 17
3.2 in 16
2.9 in 14
2.9 in 13
2.7 in 09
2.3 in 08

What that shows to me is the numbers maybe up so it looks good but the quality of members is way down. Obviously a lot more 3 gamers than in 09 considering that the price of membership is far dearer how. Even in the bad year of 14 when we had many less members than now we had the same revenue. Cant use how bad we are now because most join before the season and we were terrible in 14 anyway and terrible in 13. they are false numbers now so I cant agree we have this huge supporter base because conditions have been better for members lately and before last year we were on the way up yet revenue is crap.

 

[plugger66]

you are confusing member and supporter again ...
we burnt supporters by not being open with them , we burnt them by not engaging with them in the thought that "as long as we win games they will be happy" ... the issue is when we had our moment in the sun we locked everyone out , even to the point where we had the media locked aout from our club so while we were having our greatest period instead of our club being up in lights we were treating the media as the enemy (in part it was justified)

Still doesn't explain the poor number last year or the previous year. Facts are membership numbers are ordinary and so are crowds. The guess work is we have a big supporter base.

 

[st_trav_ofWA]

Still doesn't explain the poor number last year or the previous year. Facts are membership numbers are ordinary and so are crowds. The guess work is we have a big supporter base.

how are they poor ? we broke our membership record last year ... the year before we broke it again so year on year we were going better and better .. we are off the pace this year by about 800 after the year from hell ... crowd numbers are down for a number of reasons ...
but yet again you are not grasping the concept of membership and supporter base ... honestly im getting dizzy going around and around in circles trying to explain this to you ...
lets just leave it with the AFL are telling our club our supporter base is the equal of some of the bigger clubs but our membership doesnt reflect that so we have work to do to change that ...

 

[plugger66]

how are they poor ? we broke our membership record last year ... the year before we broke it again so year on year we were going better and better .. we are off the pace this year by about 800 after the year from hell ... crowd numbers are down for a number of reasons ...
but yet again you are not grasping the concept of membership and supporter base ... honestly im getting dizzy going around and around in circles trying to explain this to you ...
lets just leave it with the AFL are telling our club our supporter base is the equal of some of the bigger clubs but our membership doesnt reflect that so we have work to do to change that ...

I’m not sure if you reading what I’ve said but the numbers might be up but that is only because the category for being a member has changed. Don’t believe it then look at membership revenue in 14 compared to 18 even the cost has gone up. If it’s fact that our supporter base is up with the bigger clubs I’m sure you can provide figures for that. Remember I’m using fact. You are using non fact as far as I can see. I’m reading what you are saying but whilst I provide fact you provide opinions.

And crowd numbers surely reflect supporter base. Why aren’t they up there with the bigger clubs especially the previous years of 16 and 17.

 

[austinnn]

There's a detailed video explaining exactly how Richmond grew their supporter base. If someone can find it I'd love to re-watch it. I always say this but back in 2010 we had more members than they did, they only had about 30,000. One flag got them a 30,000 increase, but the rest? They went about it the right way.

As for the figures they are league issued figures. It had every club on there and their market size, latent supporter base, supporter demographic, etc etc...it had a lot of stuff on it.

You're welcome mate. Very interesting too, I hope that our club has sussed all this out by now.

But even I could have told the Tigers that folks in inner Melbourne usually only identify with one side of the Yarra - and Richmond is one of the few places with a foot in both camps, which might explain their ignorance of this unshakable truth!

Back in the day, as a resident and frequent socialiser in Carlton and Collingwood, I looked down my nose at the Chapel St scene and I very rarely went southside apart from time spent at the Espy.

When I started working in hospitality, I relaxed my stance somewhat and met a lot of people who had healthy social lives in places like Brighton Prahran (sp?) and of course St Kilda and who never visited the scungy rockdog scene north of the river. Ahhh... Memories!

Anyway; Cragieburn? Really, Richmond? LOL

 

[StCicatriz]

I agree about that period but with this huge supporter base where are the members now. We now interact better with members and before last year we’re on a pretty big upward trend but it didn’t close to show in memberships. I reckon our supporter base is a lot worse than 10 years ago and that explains the ordinary member numbers.

i think trav is right but i do think you have a point somewhat

trav is absolutely spot on about the supporter base. its a massive untapped potential. i see more st kilda fans over here than any other club bar wce/freo and maybe hawthorn. for example just the other week i was in some random perth pub in the hills and some bloke pointed out his kid had a saints bib on. you see oodles of car stickers, number plates, polos etc. but not all these people are members. i know of atleast 5 friends that are not and have never been members.

but i do think you have a point on the base taking a bit of a hit. factor in the birth rate/immigration/population increase and i question if our supporter numbers have actually grown. yes membership numbers have but i don't think its at a rate it should be. i think we've just burnt supporters for too long. poor administrations, not reaching ultimate success, the different sagas and finally the bubble trav mentioned.

turning that around will take time. the thing thats hurting us now is our inability to get the core of our business right, on field performance.