This is a little confusing to me as it says that they have 8625 ticket members, and 15,000 members. In Manly's case every member is a ticketed member and we are just about to reach 4,000. They must be offering the equivalent of the old Manly Screaming Eagles membership which last year did not include any game tickets. Even so, that is still an impressive amount of sign-ons. South Sydney lead the way for NRL by cracking 15,000 membership mark By Nick Walshaw June 11, 2009 Shane Richardson now carries membership forms in his suit pocket. Keeps a stack in his car. Some by the phone too. "Because the game of rugby league, we've been a bit slow on this concept," the South Sydney chief executive explains. "In fact, it's incredible really ... we haven't even scraped the surface yet." The Rabbitohs have officially become the first NRL club to crack the 15,000 membership mark after Coogee locals Liberty and Atticus Corbett signed on at Redfern HQ on Wednesday. And while the AFL still boasts a whopping six times the 100,000 league memberships, Richardson insists the boom has begun. "Certainly I think we're starting to understand what the AFL have known all along - that membership is your badge of honour," he says. "That this is about belonging to the club you feel so strongly about. "Like I had a bloke on the phone the other day telling me how he's been a Souths fan for 25 years. So I asked, 'Oh, what number are you?'. Because a couple of years ago I was one of those saying maybe Sydney isn't a membership town. Maybe it's not part of the league mentality. But now all that is changing." Comparing memberships has always been something of a sore point among league officialdom. Brisbane, for example, count only season ticket holders among their 11,500. Souths now have 8625 ticket members - the highest of all Sydney clubs - but say it's the addition of extra packages that now sees their membership bringing in $2million annually. Importantly, about 70 per cent of that cash comes in during the traditionally quiet Christmas period when no games are being played. The Rabbitohs offer a variety of special extras for members including exclusive website access, private fan days and their Return to Redfern trials. Those little white Bunnies you see on the back of every fourth car in Sydney are also part of the goodies bag. "Because this isn't about just getting out there and telling people to become a member of Souths," coach Jason Taylor says. "It's about giving them extra value for their membership dollar. It's about belonging to the family."
15000 is still poor considering they got 80000 to marches when they were kicked out. Also if the numbers are true it means if the NRL kicked the sharks they would get at least 80 people marching to get them back.Â
Are Manly looking deeply into how Souths (and AFL clubs) are doing this? Irrespective of any direct financial benefits of 15k members, the very act of people joining makes them more likely to commit in other ways.
