We should have been riding the success of our championship, but the off season movements have killed the momentum entirely. Disappointing for AU, we dropped the ball.

Classic Griffin. The tight arse strikes again with little visionary. But at least he was able to cash in on not having to pay his players higher wages and thus pushing them out the door. 

Our cap on memberships really won't be that much bigger at Spotless.

Bit of an update. Feel free to colour code, Davo.

FFA really need to think carefully about Roar. They're coming last for memberships.

Adelaide - 5,718
Brisbane - 1,249
Central Coast - 3,647
Melb City - 7,785
Melb Victory - 20,364
Newcastle - 6,638
Perth - 5,451
Sydney - 9,158
Wellington - 1,874
Western Sydney - 16,845
TOTAL: 78,729

Wanderers 16981.

Brisbane - 1491

there are too many disappointing membership figures

The season is 5 weeks away ffs

That said I'm not signing up until Gallop is gone. And I was an AU member since the NSL.

Gallop goes and the keys are passed on to another AFL/NRL stooge. It's the FFA way. 

Tbh only Brisbane and Adelaide have been disappointing. And Brisbane is clear as daylight as to why. Adelaide have NO excuse NONE!! Fans or ex members can whinge all they like about losing the players they lost, but they just won the championship for the very first time and have still retained the coach so it could be expected that they will do well again this year.

What does Adelaide have to do to win fans over? 

I think it's clear that the lack of marketable marquees is the issue here, but of course all the people that are agaisnt this will find it hard to argue as Adelaide has managed to do the following:

- Play attractive football
- Play winning football and winning the title for the first time in front of capacity crowd at Adelaide Oval.
- Play out of a purpose built stadium with a real boutique feel.
- Play on a great footballing surface.

So if memberships are down then it would seem as though a lack of big football named players is missing. THey need a marquee desperately. That will get them ticking to 8-9k+ memberships.

Without Brisbane, we are tracking similar to last year's figures. Given the good vibes this year this is disappointing. The important consideration is that the economy isn't going as well as the headlines say, so maybe this is the reason why we are not seeing increases in memberships.

17071

@ footballkings55

It's worth taking Brisbane out of the equation as it's pretty clear what's going on there.

Looking at the other 9 clubs it's not all that great really, last season was excellent and most sides have made some good signings - Nix in particular is disapointing given last years dramas on "metrics" but also they've made some good signings?

But really, so far on memberships the word is "disappointing" surely?

That's okay, we can't see a huge increase each year. We'll have to look at stats on a long-term graph.

@ The Dudist

Correct, however memberships were down last season also so it's not yet a trend but struggling to match last seasons achievement is not good. Victory and Wanderers can't do much more but Brisbane and SFC should both be over 10k at this stage (Brisbane can use their dramas as a reason but we all know they'd not hit 10k even without the issues!)

Oh I agree. I meant the long-term graph for the other teams. Eg, hardly an increase in last year is still growth in some way. I won't expect unnatural hormone KFC chicken growth, as much as I want the league to explode as such. :)

Really hope Brisbane can change their ways. Can't see it happening this year though, which sucks for them. I love seeing high membership numbers, but I certainly won't judge the fans who are getting shafted by their club.

Roars latest "new MD" is apparently not worried by the low membership numbers but is planning a sales push all the same, Roar targeting a huge surge in membership sales:

http://www.couriermail.com.au/sport/football/a-league/brisbane-roar-aiming-for-huge-surge-in-member-numbers-ahead-of-aleague-season/news-story/c2f3d0802d0111cd10f3261677ba5ee8

Looks to be inviting trouble to me but at least they're trying!

Wow bling FC are almost getting doubled. 

The people have spoken. Looks like the fans are quite resolute and won't budge until change has been achieved. 

Is that your opinion of things Waz? Like, are the fans staging a peaceful protest? Or have things gotten to the point of no return where it can't be fixed, and the fans have actually walked away permanently?

@ The Dudist

It's a little hard to call, it depends if you're an optimist or not - it was hoped the membership protest last year where membership more than halved would send a message. Those that didn't renew their membership promised to support the team and still turn up and with a Suncorp average of nearly 14k last season I'd say they kept their word.

But the deal was no more BS ... so for the FFA to have to loan money to the club in March to avoid them folding and players not being paid again last month any message clearly hasn't been heard so now fans seem outright angry or worse, disinterested. The situation with fans is way, way worse than last year.

Without change I recon membership will halve again to around 2,500 which is a comical number but worse still, many fans won't turn up on game day all of which is going to make finances worse, then of course there's a risk the players monthly payment gets missed again and this time the good ones break their contracts and leave, so even fewer fans turn up. There's a militant attitude this year that seems to be saying even if we have to break the club before things get better so be it, if that gets traction we are in real trouble.

My optimistic view is this is temporary as a protest and that the right owners can reverse this but it's a case of what damage is done first - Cobb made an offer (2 actually) to buy the club and it was rejected so what chance does anyone rise have if the Bakries are suddenly picky on who they sell to?

On the plus side Saturday nights friendly at QSAC was played in front of a very healthy attendance so if they can drag them out on a cold winters night there is hope. Looking at comments on the Supporters Facebook page this initiative is being laughed at so it will be interesting to see what tone this "bulk email" to everyone takes.

The one man they should get involved with the club is David Pourre, probably the only person the fans trust and the fact he's not involved is pretty damning to many fans.

I'll post the content on the bulk email if I get it and it's interesting.

lol Roar membership "push" email came out at 1000, nothing exciting, just reminded fans to renew membership. So push with a small "p" .... as if anyone had forgotten :)

A-League club membership numbers as of Monday, August 29

Melb. Victory –20,364

WS Wanderers – 16,876

Sydney FC ¬ 8501

Melb. City ¬7746

Newcastle Jets – 6632

Adel. Utd ¬ 5718

Perth Glory ¬ 5469

Cent Coast – 3461

Well Phoenix – 1874

Bris Roar – 1413

@ Lookatmooy

Roars at 1681 as of this morning, it's a slow crawl up but it is going up at a rate of 50/day

its sad how badly both younger brothers (city and fc) are doing in comparison with their big highly successful brothers

:laugh:

Club Total 2016/17       [%] (Total 15/16) (Total 14/15)

1) Melbourne Victory:   20,844  [77.0%]    (27,054) (24,200) 
2) Western Sydney Wanderers:  17,071  [93.0%] (18,349) (18,706) 
3) Sydney FC:    9,178  [69.7%]    (13,153) (11,510)
4) Melbourne City:   7,942  [85.4%]  (9,298) (11,759)
5) Newcastle Jets:    6,638  [71.6%] (9,264) (10,003)
6) Adelaide United:  5,718  [65.5%]   (8,720) (9,505)
7) Perth Glory :   5,505  [77.4%]   (7,109) (6,298)
8) Central Coast Mariners:   3,461 [57.2%] (6,048) (6,242)
9) Wellington Phoenix:  1,874  [37.2%]  (5,035) (4,185)
10) Brisbane Roar:  1,413 [26.4%]  (5,347) (12,113)

TOTAL:  79,644   (109,377) (114,521)

15/16 = 109,377 ........ as of round 1 2015 membership count was:   89,437
14/15 = 114,521 ........ as of Round 1 2014 membership count was:  97,252 
13/14 =   94,520 ........ as of Round 1 2013 membership count was:  86,352

Legend: #black = no change since update. #blue = change < 100 since last update, #green = 100 - 500, #violet = change > 500 since last update. 
Stats are taken from the individual club membership pages, the main a-league tally as well as directly from club representatives.

50 a day puts the membership at around 3,400 at R1, seem fair?

lol as much as i troll at times i want every club to be as successful as possible off the field i honestly think with melbourne city and sydney fc 10,000 is possible at this point i mean at least sydney fc is almost there but with city the cahill effect should have kicked in imo

Okay so my update was over a 2 week period as I forgot to do one last Thursday. We are climbing at a rate 2,500 per week and at this rate we would hit 95k come round 1 which if it happened would be amazing considering what has transpired with some of the clubs and the league over the past 12 months. However that 95k is very very unlikely as we will no doubt see a big slow down once Victory and WSW reach their cap.

Not sure what on earth is happeneing at the Mariners. They have managed to go backwards a few hundred since a fortnight ago. Any Mariners fans care to enlighten?

Adelaide are by far the biggest disappointment. They have managed (unbelievably) to lose all that positive forward momentum they got winning the title. How can you be reiging champions and not want to follow your club? Forget losing some players, how is explained? They have an awesome coach playing positive football in an awesome stadium. Yet it seems as though they were more excited this time last year than they are now. And let's not forget that the sentiment wasn't fantastic last year as Gombau had just left and they hadn't just come off a home win in front 50k+ fans. I think it's time Adelaide started to pull out some money and actually come forward and buy a player the fans want to pay money for to watch. They seem to link themselves to all these international stars but nothing ever eventuates. Last year it was Toni, this year Klose and Kuriyani. I'm sure a few seasons back they were linked to other big players too.

 Not sure why but starting to see big slow down with Perth. Don't understand why or how considering how bullish they were just a few weeks ago. And things seem set for a fantastic year too. Perhaps it will pick up again in weeks to come. But they should break their record nevertheless which would be great!

Newcastle Jets have also strangely only jumped up around 30 in the last 12 days. That can't be right. Might just be that they are about to update again. 

Don't really need to mention Brisbane because we are all aware of the reason and situation up there. A real shame that in the history of the league they haven't managed to find ONE stable owner. They could be a really big club if the right type of consortium took over and actually had real vision into growing the club. We've seen what their potential is even without spending big on marquees etc. Imagine if they landed a big name and had a bit of stability off the park. 

They did the same last season

Probably someone on commission revising the figures after payday