Membership Total

[robbieando]

As of yesterday we have

18,614 members fully paid up.

Now thats better than I expected with whats gone at the club in the off season and the fact the Melbourne members only get 5 matches. Good stuff, we are on target for 25,000 members which won't be that much of a drop if at all.

[Richo]

What sort of memberships do NRL clubs get (out of interest) or are they not member owned like AFL clubs?

[bricon]

Their members, with a few exceptions, own most NRL clubs; Brisbane are owned by a publicly listed company; North Queensland, Melbourne Storm and Canberra are still controlled by News Ltd (a leftover from the Super League war). The structure of the membership if NRL clubs is very different from the AFL scene, most of the membership based clubs have around a couple of thousand members (or less) of the football club, who elect the directors of the club but membership does not have any season ticket privileges as is usually the case with AFL membership, it costs about $20 per year to be a member of an NRL football club.

Most NRL clubs also have an associated leagues club; these are often enormous enterprises, some with more than 60,000 members. These licensed clubs often have common directors with the football club and they make an annual grant to the football club from their profits ? around $2,000,000 a season in most cases.

NRL clubs sell season ticket packages, these do not include membership of the club, anyone can buy one however there has never been a tradition of season ticket ownership with rugby league followers. Most clubs would only sell around 1000 season ticket packages per year, most RL fans buy their tickets at the ground on match day except for the major fixtures ? finals, State Of Origin, internationals etc.

[Cheer Cheer]

Yeh that doesnt seem too bad a total at this stage, I think we will get to 25,000, but it better pick up soon, there is only 4 weeks till the footy season starts, and this is usually the "hot" period for memberships to go up quite a bit, so time will tell.
I assume the number includes members australia wide not just sydney ?
Anyone know which state outside of sydney, apart from melbourne is the biggest membership base out of curosity ?