AFL club membership at an all-time high

The AFL completed its official membership audit this week, following the June 30 deadline, and Mr Demetriou said the 16 AFL clubs, working with their players, coaches and administrative staff, had continued to do an outstanding job in building the health of the game with a total of 614,251 Australians committing to be members of a club.

As at the deadline, the tally for the 16 AFL clubs represented a rise of 4.48 per cent on last year’s previous record tally of 586,748 members. Club membership has now risen every single year since the 2001 season, and the only drop in membership through the last 20 years since 1990 was for the single year in 2000, when the season was brought forward by a month to accommodate the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

“On behalf of the AFL, I wish to thank every single person across Australia who supports our game and who makes the commitment to join an AFL club,” Mr Demetriou said.

“I would like to congratulate the players, staff and coaches at each of our clubs, who work so hard to make our game a success.

“Membership continues to be the lifeblood of our clubs and the AFL’s single-most important indicator of the game’s health remains attendances at our matches and the commitment of our supporters to become a member of one of our clubs,” he said.

“The AFL clubs deserve great credit for their work in drawing supporters to the game and I want to particularly highlight the tremendous role of our AFL players, both for the standard of our game they are producing on the field and for the work they are doing off the field in engaging with communities across our nation.”

Mr Demetriou said 11 clubs had recorded increases on their 2009 membership tally – the Brisbane Lions, Collingwood, Essendon, Fremantle, the Geelong Cats, Hawthorn, Melbourne, the Sydney Swans, St Kilda, West Coast and the Western Bulldogs.

Collingwood recorded a massive increase of nearly 20 per cent, taking its total membership to 57,408 – a record for any club in the game’s history and making the Magpies only the third team behind the Adelaide Crows (2006 and 2007) and Hawthorn (2009 and 2010) to top 50,000 members in a season.

St Kilda recorded the second-largest increase of 18.23 per cent while the Western Bulldogs also recorded double-digit growth.

Mr Demetriou said seven clubs now boasted membership bases beyond 40,000 – Adelaide, Carlton, Collingwood, Essendon, the Geelong Cats Hawthorn and West Coast – with Geelong joining this elite group for the first time on the back of its 2009 premiership success, while junior membership also expanded.

“On the field, our game is constantly re-invigorated by new young stars coming into the game and the influx of children as club members is tremendously important for our long-term health,” he said.