http://www.smh.com.au/rugby-league/...ke-mockery-of-memberships-20130307-2fohp.html
SOUFFS LOL
Rugby league has an ignoble history of creative counting - fictitious crowd figures, salary cap manipulation, exaggerating injury tallies, even miscounting tackles.
Club memberships are the most recent of the code's rubbery figures. South Sydney boast they led the NRL for total members, with 22,154 for last season, and their number and that of all NRL clubs will be boosted over the next couple of weeks, the period the NRL says is busiest for buying memberships.
Across the NRL spectrum, there are senior members, child members, voting members, ticketed members and even pet members, meaning dogs, cats and even lizards can become Rabbits.
Souths say they have 173 pet memberships in response to their website offer of a $50 cut-price membership for non-humans: ''Make sure even the furry, scaly, slimy or slippery Members of your family are Members of the Rabbitohs.''.
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The Rabbitohs insist their 173-pet memberships are not counted in their official figures and volunteer that no pet memberships were sold last year. But they don't have to go to the dogs to lead the NRL because they count non-voting members under the age of 18. In Souths' report to ASIC, it lists the total membership for 2012 as 16,025, a difference of 6129 with the proclaimed figure.
A Rabbitohs spokesman explains: ''There is no fudging of membership numbers between the announced total in 2012 as 22,154 and the Member Co number in the Annual Report of 16,025.
''The Member Company is the entity which holds the 'golden share', which controls the name, colours, jersey, team song and home ground of the club. It is also the entity to which voting rights are held, hence the requirement to be over 18. No one under the age of 18 is included in this number, hence the difference between the two numbers.''
However, for some clubs, the figure given to ASIC and the propagandised one is the same. For last season, Brisbane's annual report lists a membership of 26,216, the same figure supplied to ASIC and consistent with a boast on their website on January 25: ''Last year the Broncos led the way in the NRL after posting a mark of 26,216.''
However, the NRL lists the Broncos membership at 17,561 as at February 10, well short of Souths on 22,003. Perhaps the Broncos include members of their leagues club at Red Hill, a count the Rabbitohs would never consider given the long delay in getting a beer at their renovated licensed premises at Redfern.
The Dragons, the first club to launch a membership program with their Red V appeal in 2002, are third on the NRL list with 16,314 and do not count the vast membership of their leagues club.
St George Illawarra says: ''We currently have 17,444 members committed to 'March With Us' in 2013, comprising 11,809 ticketed and 5635 non-ticketed members.''
Ticketed membership provides ticketing entitlements to Dragons home games at both playing venues - Jubilee Oval, Kogarah and WIN Stadium, Wollongong, while non-ticketed membership caters for ''True Believer'' supporters who can't regularly attend home games.
Dragons' chief executive Peter Doust makes most sense of the malleable membership figures, pointing out yield is the significant number.
Discounting tickets to games that fans would pay full price, or supplying costly benefits to boost numbers, damages the bottom line. Souths' income from membership is $3.7 million a year, compared to $350,000 some years ago.
The Dragons have more than doubled their yield in four years, from $1.061 million to $2.55 million. Souths aim for 25,000 members this year and the Dragons are aiming for 20,000 memberships.
The NRL says memberships across all clubs are up 18 per cent from last year, including every club. A spokesman says: ''The NRL membership team is doing a promotion now where they are asking fans to claim every postcode in Australia for their club, and every country in the world.''
The ARLC has also indicated it will reward clubs with increased grants for meeting targets. If this results in clubs counting Fido the dog and Felix the cat in membership figures, it's akin to AFL clubs deliberately losing games and coming last in order to be rewarded with high draft choices.
