How demography helped Richmond Football Club double its membership

The club engaged .id to see if underlying demographic patterns could explain the poor result and point the club to a better location.

We were immediately struck by the Craigieburn decision. Why would Richmond, a club with a long history in the inner southeast, go north? To a demographer it was clear why Richmond were struggling to gain traction there. But unless you had demographic expertise, it would be an easy mistake to make.

Football is generational. You tend to support the team your parent’s supported. To build membership, low hanging fruit are the children of past and current members. So the question is, where are they?

We started by mapping the location of current and past Richmond members. It showed a clear spatial pattern with membership strongest in Melbourne’s southeastern suburbs, fanning out from the club’s heartland in Richmond (the red areas on the map below).

Then the demography comes in. We know that when the children of current Richmond supporters grow up and leave home, we can predict with some confidence where they will move to. In Melbourne there is a clear northwest and southeast divide. People that grew up in the southeast have a strong tendency to move further southeast to a suburb they can afford when they buy their family home. Demographers call this outward sectoral migration.

You can clearly see people who live in Richmond strongholds fanning out across the east and southeastern suburbs (the yellow arrows on the map below).