Club members on the march

AFL CLUB memberships are at an all-time high, with more than 538,000 fans signing up as at April 16.

This exceeds the previous record of 532,697 established last year, despite two months remaining before memberships close.

AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou praised the record membership figure.

"The 16 AFL clubs have done an incredible amount of work around club membership and their results in 2008 have been quite unbelievable," Demetriou said.

"A figure of better than one in 38 Australians is an AFL club member and our clubs have worked incredibly hard to raise total membership numbers by more than eight per cent as against the same time in April last year."

As at April 2007, total club member numbers were at 498,530, more than 40,000, or eight per cent, lower than the 2008 figure.

Demetriou said the standout clubs in terms of attracting new members were North Melbourne (up 38.4 per cent), Hawthorn (up 16.9 per cent) and Geelong (up 16.7 per cent), while the Brisbane Lions, Carlton, Collingwood, Carlton and Essendon had also already exceeded their 2007 results.

"The brilliant membership figures achieved by our 16 clubs are a sign equally of the importance of our game to everyday Australians, the quality of the football that is being played by our elite athletes, and the brilliant work being done by our AFL clubs," Demetriou said.

Attached are the AFL membership figures and breakdown for each club, compared to April 2007.