A proposal by the BFL board to allow those with club memberships to enter their team’s away games for half-price was supported 7-3 by club presidents.

It’s an initiative the BFL hopes will help to attract bigger crowds to games.

“We want to encourage people to come back to Bendigo league football and netball,” BFL chief executive officer Steven Oliver said yesterday.

“So by becoming a member of a BFNL club, if you show your membership ticket at an away game you will get in for half-price.”

At this stage, the initiative will only involve away games which the member’s club is involved in, meaning a Sandhurst member couldn’t get into a Golden Square versus Eaglehawk game for half-price.

“One of the things raised was, 'how do we get more people back to the footy, and how do we get club’s supporters to go to their away games', so that was the driving force behind it,” Oliver said.

“We looked at a couple of different ways we could try to do that, and one of the other big focuses was how we could get those supporters of clubs to become members of clubs.

“So we looked at ways we could value-add to memberships . . . if you buy a membership and go to all your home games, that is terrific, and we certainly want that to continue, but we also want you to go and support your club when they’re playing away, and as an incentive for that, there will be half-price entry.”