I know some people on here are just trolling but attacking the validity of Souths memberships numbers (again) is stupidity - especially when these numbers and their $ figures are published on record as part of the Souths Members Co. end of year/AGM reports.
There's a myriad of reasons why Souths have the most members in Sydney. We lost our club from the NRL for one because they were a financial basket case. This almost happened again 2002-2006 and part of Blackcourt's (Holmes a Court/Crowe) central message was that the 'golden ticket' - for lack of a better term - remained in the hands of the members. If you want voting rights to maintain the key aspects of our history, you need to be a member. Also without a Leagues Club to support us, membership along with sponsorship became our number one forms of revenue.
To the majority of Souths members being a member is about providing a donation to the club that we love and support - not about "what we get out of it". It's this mindset that has 15/20k-odd people hand their cash over each year as non-ticketed members for very little gain - and our non-ticketed memberships at $100 a pop aren't cheap either.
Considering I joined as a member in 1999 and at the time we had around 300 members, to 100x that amount now - we've come a long way as a club.
