ALMOST half a million Australians signed up for AFL club memberships before the start of the 2008 AFL Toyota premiership season, according to figures released by the league on Monday.

Before the first round, 496,759 people had purchased memberships of one of the 16 AFL clubs, some 37,000 more than at the same time in 2007. The figure doesn't take in any of the memberships sold across the first weekend of games.

The final total for all club memberships in 2007 was 532,697.

AFL CEO Andrew Demetriou has praised the clubs for their hard work in building memberships.

“To have this rate of memberships before the first ball was even bounced in the year we celebrate 150 years of Australian Football is fantastic and points to another record year of membership for AFL clubs,” Demetriou said.

“It shows that people want to go and watch the style of Australian Football that we are seeing but also that our football supporters want to demonstrate their passion by financially getting behind their club.

Victorian clubs are leading the surge in membership sales growth, with Hawthorn (up 8500), North Melbourne (up 7500), Carlton (up 6500), Geelong (up 6000), Collingwood (up 4000) and Essendon (up 3500) all well ahead of their figures at the start of last season. Only Melbourne (down 500) and Western Bulldogs (down 1000) were slightly behind before the season's opening bounce.

Of the non-Melbourne sides, Adelaide is comfortably ahead of all clubs with more than 47,332 members to date, with Brisbane up 2000 members from the same time last year. Fremantle is down slightly after a massive increase in 2007.