The benefits of Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera’s new deal is already being felt at St Kilda
Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera celebrates during the match between St Kilda and North Melbourne at Marvel Stadium in round 21, 2025. Picture: AFL Photos
WHAT’S $2 million a season if you make a million of it back in memberships?
St Kilda has quickly felt the “off the charts” ‘Nas effect’ this week, with the Saints already selling 10,000 of their $7 three-game memberships for 2026.
They are projecting that number will get to 12,000 by the end of the week-long sale on Monday, which is a week on from Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera’s seismic decision to sign a two-year extension with the Saints worth $2 million a season until the end of 2027, as revealed by AFL.com.au.
If 10,000 of the sign-ons from this week’s frenzy roll over their memberships at the end of 2026 at an average of $100 per membership, Wanganeen-Milera’s signing would bring in $1 million for 2027.
Saints chief executive Carl Dilena told AFL.com.au the reaction to star Saint’s re-signing, having been heavily courted by Adelaide and Port Adelaide, has been enormous.
“There’s been 10,000 sign on at present and they’re forecasting we might get to 12,000 with the momentum and other people we need to follow up with who have left messages and need to contact,” Dilena said.
“For 2026, they’ll be on the three-game membership but there’s a lot of people there who we haven’t had any contact from before. So new people there, as well as a lot of lapsed members from the past who haven’t engaged with the club for a while. Refreshing all of that gives us a chance to engage with them over the next year with the hope at the end of next year they continue their membership on to 2027.
“There’s low yield over the next 12 months but hopefully we retain a decent percentage to roll on to standard memberships. If you looked across our entire membership base, you usually would have an average yield per membership to be 100 bucks.
“So if there’s 10,000 members at $100, there’s $1 million in potential revenue. It might be slightly lower if they roll it over for a five-game membership, but the goal would be to go well as a team next year and keep people on board for the journey and there’s a good potential revenue kicker for us in 2027.”
Dilena said the uptake of the membership option had exceeded expectations, with the club’s website temporarily crashing on Monday due to the demand.
“I am surprised at the level. We expected it to be popular but this is off the charts,” he said.
“To put it in perspective, the best the club has done in an entire season in trying to acquire (new) members is 6000. We’ll end up with two years worth of acquisition, obviously at a lower price, but that’s the scale we’re talking about in terms of the interest it’s generated.
“It’s off the charts.”
The Saints have also launched a merchandise range featuring Wanganeen-Milera, with the t-shirt revenue this week already at $25,000 from sales.
“We were ready and raring to go. We had all scenarios covered – this one and the more depressing one – and we put 95 per cent of our efforts into option A, which was the positive result and not much effort into option B.”
Wanganeen-Milera is set to next week become a first-time All-Australian winner as well as being the red hot favourite to claim the Saints’ best and fairest after his stellar season.