The 15 counties that are members' organisations submit returns to the FCA (Well they are supposed to, a bit more on that below) which include the number of members. The figures for 2021 are as follows:
| County | Members | |
|---|---|---|
| Derbyshire | 871 | |
| Essex* | 4348 | |
| Glamorgan | 2180 | |
| Gloucester | 3590 | |
| Kent | 1570 | |
| Lancashire | 3460 | |
| Leicestershire | 880 | |
| Middlesex | 7312 | |
| Nottinghamshire | 5475 | |
| Somerset | 6713 | |
| Sussex | 1671 | |
| Surrey | 17115 | |
| Warwickshire* | 4418 | |
| Worcestershire | 1787 | |
| Yorkshire | 3408 | |
| 64798 | ||
The asterix next to Warwickshire and Essex is because those counties haven't managed to file their 2021 annual returns, it's only a legal requirement chaps, no need to rush. In the absence of 2021 data, I've used 2019 figures. So roughly 65,000 county members, perhaps a few less.
The data section of the excellent Bythesightscreen blog includes data on county membership numbers going back as far as 2005. It shows memberships as 71,000 for 2010 so not much of a drop of over the next 11 years. But the relatively constant numbers for the 15 members' organisations conceals some big changes at individual counties. Surrey only had 7k members in 2010 and have more than doubled that number since. In 2021 25% of all county members were Surrey members. Other counties have kept their membership pretty constant over the last 11 years and some have seen numbers fall sharply. Derbyshire and Leicestershire now have less than 1k members & Yorkshire and Lancashire have both seen membership numbers almost half since 2010.
One note of caution, as ever with county cricket statistics different counties do different things. So at Surrey there is a white ball membership. At other counties 20/20 season tickets and the like don't qualify the holder for membership. As the county championship has shrunk from 16 to 14 games with fewer of those games being played at the summer and on weekends it's not unreasonable to think some cricket watchers may have replaced memberships with season tickets and membership numbers are not strictly comparable between counties.
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