After having been named to the Guinness Book of World Records for being the biggest soccer club in the world, SL Benfica has established itself a new goal.  Benfica now wants to surpass the 200 thousand “socios”, or registered fans mark.  While in the USA and many other countries there are season ticket holders, in Portugal, and some other countries its the concept of “socio” that is used.  In short, a “socio” is a registered team fan.  Usually “socios” pay a fixed, small, monthly fee that gives them the right to buy game tickets at a discounted price.  Recently teams like Benfica have also included other perks with their “socio” fan memberships.

The Benfica “socio” card is sold as a “kit”, and this season´s “socio kit”, as well as the “kit junior” were introduced this week.  Benfica went from about 95000 registered fans to the current number of 170000 since the “kit” was first introduced in May 2005.

For all of you living in far away countries, SL Benfica also has the “socio correspondent” version (translated into “correspondent fan”).  These fans are entitled to the Benfica fan card, but pay a more reduced monthly rate since it is very unlikely that they will see more than one Benfica game, if that.

Freddy Adu, Di Maria and Edcarlos where the players chosen to make the official introduction of this season´s Benfica team card.