sydney fc fan hating on western sydney etc etc

As a neutral I read the WSW membership as this: Half the fans aren't interested in going to the AFL stadium and fucking around the suburbs waiting for a game at a rectangular stadium. They will come back when Parra reopens and they will come back in a bad way. They want to support the club in the interim. So they're buying memberships, not attending games, and waiting for the new stadium.

Memberships are only good for selling the idea that the sport is well followed to government and sponsors. It seems to have always been popular in Victoria - less so in NSW and Queensland. When WSW were packing out Parramatta Stadium it was important for their supporters to be a member. Sydney did not have that problem at Allianz so the need to become a member is not that important.

That said - if you are going to the majority of the games why wouldn't you buy a membership simply to save money.

Sydney now over 12k.

11, 997 actually. 

Attendances never hit hit membership numbers when they were at Parra either. All good, I'm sure Wanderers fans can come up for an excuse for that one too.

I'm sick of it being this sort of accepted fact that the Wanderers are the bigger club when attendances have never, ever reflected that.

I do agree though that they'll probably start averaging 20k when new Parra stadium opens, but I honestly believe Sydney would too if we got a state of the art compact ground like that. 

Are you serious mate? Also, that was last weeks number. 

I'm sure they will. But here's the thing. When a club exhausts its allocation because of stadium capacity it's actually impossible to match membership for attendances. Maybe a season ticket holder decides not to go to a game. The next week they can't choose to go twice.

Also membeship and season tickets today just aren't comparable to the previous generation where season ticket meant all games. If 5 people buy a 3 game membership and use the tickets fully that still means the ratio of member:attendee will be 4:1.

Frankly membership numbers are now totally meaningless. As someone else said, they're just a number you shout to sponsors and government with your cap in hand.

FFA have updated the HAL website and the membership table has dropped off - anyone got a new link?

What are you talking about "previous generation" with regards to memberships in Sydney?  Membership is only a new thing in Sydney.  The norm in Sydney for over a century was just to rock up and pay at the gate and sit where you wanted to.  Memberships in Sydney culture are simply a vehicle for cheaper entry and avoidance of the line up at the ticket sales window.  It has nothing to do with attachment to the club.

The Chatham cup has a lot of interest and history behind it.

What NZF is apparently doing is instead moving the Premiership to eventually be club based teams and then to have promotion and relegation, at that point the top teams in the country (apart from the Phoenix) will all be eligible for the Chatham Cup.

Who knows how likely they are to do it but it is in the long term plan.

It wouldn't make sense to create an NZF Cup as a rival cup competition and throw away all the history and mana that the Chatham cup has.

Jerks: 7079

Wanderers 16,236

Apologies. To clarify, I'm talking about the membership culture of Victoria, SA and WA and AFL primarily. 20 years ago you could look at the Adelaide Crows AFL club membership figure and it meant season ticket holders. Now membership means nothing of the sort, because it has been broadened to include the new style 3 game memberships which really is just a glorified matchday ticket where you leave your name and address at ticketek. It also now includes members with no matchday entitlements at all, or simple online access members. In the previous generation this was considered a non-ticketed membership and wasn't even included in the tally. Now everything is included and the only purpose is it make the number bigger. I used to collect membership statistics for 25 years but stopped because they're a) not comparable and b) meaningless.

These aleague membership stats are like the new generation of meaningless stat. They're a great number to sell to sponsors and local governments. They have next to nothing to do with attendances.

Impressive that the jerks are at 7k after finishing last.
Credit where it's due there's a good membership culture in the Hunter considering.

The fact of the matter is that even if WSW don't get bigger crowds for home games in their new stadium they will always fall back on the old "yeah but syd fc have been around for 10 years longer.." 

In all honesty the best thing for football is for both clubs to do very well and get lots of members but more importantly high attendances as that creates an increase in perception for the popularity of the game. If we rely on TV audiences we're going to be always way behind, but as attendances is something we can do well, if only the FFA weren't so fucking shit. The fan made advert a few years ago truly reflected how good it is when active support is allowed to prosper. Shame that the FFA had to ruin it all.

Anyhow, back on topic, with Syd FC having 2 derbies this season, they will comfortably beat WSW for crowds, despite having only 3/4 of the members.

Victory 24025 as of today.

This is still the case. I thought perhaps they are still tweaking the website with the update, but seems the new lay-out won't be accommodating the membership tally and the same unfortunately for the official websites of the clubs. Hopefully this changes or we see updates via their other Social Media accounts. Last we saw prior to the update, the A-League was tracking okay. I hope this isn't anything to do with the Congress stuff.

Biggest and the best etc etc

Roar 5,627 at the end of last week.

Source = Kingsman tweet

I'm guessing that was before the fan forums. Seems your prediction of 5,500 was light on, that's good news all round. Hopeful for a great season. 

@ footballkingz

Yeah, they had a bit of a surge last week putting on 600. Should break the 6k mark before the first home game.

Brisbane at 6258 members as of yesterday. 

A lot of red. 

@ The Select Few

A lot of Red? 60% of clubs are ahead of where they were this time last year and the overall total is the same near as damn it (add in Roars update and it's ahead).

The rest of the red is for the full season total which is an irrelevant comparison this early.

Surely the select few didn't just fart out a smart arsed negative comment with no thought behind it?

ha ha

Thanks for uploading another table Davo. Just to point out, a few of those figures are now dated to a week or so ago, given the update to the FFA's websites, which it seems has removed the A-League wide and too club specific, membership numbers from their pages. Given this dated info and going by the trends of recent weeks and this time of season, expect that most of those clubs would be more than a few hundred more than that by now. Glory were 6,600-ish or so last I saw, for instance. A few clubs should see a surge during this period including those with slightly sluggish growth compared to their recent seasons like Adelaide United and Melbourne City. It's also promising to see the Roar and their fans 'may've' put their worst behind them?

You also can't under-state Sydney FC's improvement - perhaps it took a while, but their excellent season is finally translating into the kind of growth that may actually surpass the numbers they achieved in the ADP era and push more towards Pignata's stated aim for the club stated during that time, to hit that 15k membership mark.

To be fair the red in most of that is in relation to the percentage compared to the total for last season. So I wouldn't be looking at the percentages at this stage (wait 2-3 months), but rather focus just on the column which is comparing this time last year. All in all pretty even to be honest. Actually more green than red, just that the one's in red are dragging the overall down more.

Mariners around 5, 200