Put simply - if you build a brand around success, which is defined as winning, then you suffer when you have any lengthy periods of non-performance.
If you build a club, rather than a brand, around a set of shared core values and expectations, then the on field story can be less determinative of crowd and membership. It's a far more enduring structure. Good an bad become part of the history, the struggle and the (possibly epic) journey to the eventual ultimate success.
But if you are a snake oil salesman selling instant success, which can apparently be bought and sold overnight, and in doing so, you disenfranchise core supporters and destroy the club narrative, then you have very little to fall back on when the going gets tough.
It's made even more bitter by the fact that the AFL has shown - with GWS - that you can buy instant success. But you need far more $$ than we have access to, and even with that chequebook, and benefits, success is not guaranteed (witness Gold Coast). But watch the GWS fall in a heap when they eventually have their doldrums. Because they have been sold a product, not a club, and they - justifiably - will only have supporters while they deliver that product.
That's where we are right now.
Watch the numbers decline even more over the next 12 months. Whether you agree with the corporatisation and branding regime of the current administration, you have to ask whether they should have done a bit of research into our list age and makeup a few years ago before making the promises they made - which look pretty hollow in hindsight.