Club claims pressured by AFL to relocate in Tasmania

[Limerick]

The 2012 experience when the membership went up by 11% also does not support your claim.

What % membership increase are you projecting for 2013 noting that 3% will just keep us level with the competition? I hope I'm wrong on this but we are not tracking well for a substantial increase this year.

 

[Shagga is all Class]

What % membership increase are you projecting for 2013 noting that 3% will just keep us level with the competition? I hope I'm wrong on this but we are not tracking well for a substantial increase this year.

Even 3% would be a good result and better than some of the years when all games were in Melbourne.

From the Roy Morgan numbers in the past North has one of the highest conversion rates of supporters to members. Some of their research would suggest North is up around 15% against a league average of a around 9%.

Looks like North have hit 25,000 and are waiting on 11,000 from last year. They would probably expect 3-4k churn.

From what I have seen North have plenty of strategies to attract new supporters and members both in Victoria and Tasmania.

JB himself has indicated 40,000 as the board target. If achieved in the 10 or so years he was on the board it would reflect around an 80% increase. Most contending teams have a bit of a surge in membership and we have been middle of the road for a decade.

Looks like it likely North will extend to 3 in Tasmania possibly from 2015-2017 or around the time JB hands over to Scanlon or whoever.

My preference would have been for the Brian Cooks of this world to iron out the membership packages as a priority and negotiate a clause that all parties endorse secondary instead of what has been going on.

 

[drew]

Hmmmm, I see what your saying LTS. Anyone care to predict how many votes the board commands?

Is it as simple as the "for" camp needs 3 votes for every "against" lodged?

 

[Limerick]

Even 3% would be a good result and better than some of the years when all games were in Melbourne.

From the Roy Morgan numbers in the past North has one of the highest conversion rates of supporters to members. Some of their research would suggest North is up around 15% against a league average of a around 9%.

Looks like North have hit 25,000 and are waiting on 11,000 from last year. They would probably expect 3-4k churn.

From what I have seen North have plenty of strategies to attract new supporters and members both in Victoria and Tasmania.

JB himself has indicated 40,000 as the board target. If achieved in the 10 or so years he was on the board it would reflect around an 80% increase. Most contending teams have a bit of a surge in membership and we have been middle of the road for a decade.

Looks like it likely North will extend to 3 in Tasmania possibly from 2015-2017 or around the time JB hands over to Scanlon or whoever.

My preference would have been for the Brian Cooks of this world to iron out the membership packages as a priority and negotiate a clause that all parties endorse secondary instead of what has been going on.

The Ray Morgan poll is bullshit and actually makes our situation look worse. It has us at around 230k supporters but the AFL has us at around 150,000. A respondent to the RM Poll can nominate two teams, it has Sydney at the most supported team. But you are correct that we have one of the best member conversion rates but this means we have to gain more supporters in order to be able to increase our membership.

We have hit 25k and would have a churn rate of around 20% and the churn rate is much higher for 1st year members of which we would have a number. So I would conservatively think that we will lose 6K of the 11k meaning we need to gain another 4.5k new members just to reach the break even point. I believe that we can do this but exceeding it will be hard.

The 2011 NMFC Financial Report has us aiming for 40k members by 2015. To achieve this we will need to average over 6% growth over 2013-2015. The 2013 Target 10,000 initiative has us with "40,000 in our sights for 2013". If we continue at the AFL average we will go close to 40k by 2018 BUT will still be in the same relative position as today.

Our concern is if the Club starts playing excessive home games interstate and internationally we will lose, and fail to attaract, Melbourne members. Without this Constitutional change we have no answer to the "why should I join North when everybody knows you won't survive in Melbourne?" question.

 

[Hard_to_Beat]

The sun is going to explode and envelope the earth in approximately 1 billion years.

"why should I join North when everybody knows we won't survive in Melbourne?"

 

[Limerick]

The sun is going to explode and envelope the earth in approximately 1 billion years.
"why should I join North when everybody knows we won't survive in Melbourne?"

When do you finish High School HTB? You are now on my ignore list as it’s a waste of time & effort responding to such puerile garbage.

 

[Saintly31]

When do you finish High School HTB? You are now on my ignore list as it’s a waste of time & effort responding to such puerile garbage.

I'm guessing HTB is like myself and a bit over responding to continued assertions presented as facts that are simply speculation, opinion and/or mistruths.

Bit of satire perhaps.

 

[Hard_to_Beat]

When do you finish High School HTB? You are now on my ignore list as it’s a waste of time & effort responding to such puerile garbage.

No worries. I'll just keep dismantling your irrational garbage regardless.

 

[Horace]

Not sure if you're misreading deliberately or not, but the point was not about 11 home games, but about moving to 6 or fewer home games in Victoria. And it was primarily to say that a football club is not a business in which we make rational investments, and members are not like shareholders. We do not assess the returns and shift our investment accordingly - we have emotional ties and clubs cannot afford to damage those ties without significant ramifications. A football club moving to co-location, as with relocation, is a fundamental change, and it seems logical to me that the constitution wold have similar limitations on a board's capacity to unilaterally decide to go down either path. Obviously members can and will disagree about whether such a limitation is essential or desirable, or about whether his resolution is he right way to approach the issue, but at least we should stick to the basic tenets of the argument.

The team I was supposed to follow, according to the AFL in 1996, won three premierships in 2001, 2002 and 2003. And that was simply magnificent for those old Royboys who decided that Brisbane playing a handful (they play less now) of games in Victoria was their club.

But this old Royboy would have far preferred to have paid for his and his son and daughter's memberships in the Fitzroy Football Club and see them win three spoons in a row in 2001, 2002 and 2003. And that is because I would have still been able to go and see them nearly every week here in Melbourne, watch them train when I wanted to, mingled with other Royboys at the Fitzroy Club Hotel, and do all of the things that a local football team does.

And you know what? I am the proof of the pudding in this argument. I switched from the Lions to North Melbourne, because the Lions stopped playing their home games in Melbourne while North continued to play most of its home games here.

Saintly31, Shagga is all class, HtB and all you others who don't want this motion to get up, can argue until you are blue in the face; the facts are indisputable in as far as old Fitzroy supporters are concerned. Some supporters stayed with the Lions, some came to North, most other clubs received a few and some gave football away or even in some instances joined the Melbourne Storm. And the overwhelming reason for those who did not stay with the Lions was that they no longer were able to see their club play in Victoria on a regular basis.

There is a precedent and it is the experience of the Fitzroy supporters. And the board of the NMFC and any other Melbourne based Club, in my view would be well advised to take heed of it, as they tinker with the delicate balance between the number of home games played in the club's state of origin and the emotional ties that supporters have to their clubs.