my theory was that it seems to work for Australia (and also perhaps America). To counter the popularity of sport on tv as well as to compete with other forms of entertainment, you need high quality facilities. NZs model of self sustaining stadiums that can barely keep up with maintaining itself, while charging it's tenants through the roof to get the revenue to do so is likely to result in declining attendances, and sports teams going broke while having to charge higher ticket prices to recoup costs.
The counter argument to that is that we don't always have the population to justify the expenditure. Take Dunedins Forsyth Barr stadium as an example
Its not a theory if you listen to those that run sports it is an actual... termed the "Match Day Experience""' by sports heads, they say ease of getting to and from, cover from the weather, screens, access to reasonable quality food and drinks, rest rooms etc...
The AFL have lead the charge on this and play all their games in excellent stadiums, RL play mainly in very good stadiums as do most of teh A-League teams. AU have the worst in Australia mainly because of a lack of cover from the weather ....
I recall reading about two or three years ago that the Nix's had excellent crowds for a NZ team...
Tis quite sad the stadium spoken about earlier in the year did not get past the talking stage ...
This should not allow sporting bodies to get away with poor match time scheduling and PG and the Nix's seem to be the two A-League teams affected the most with poor match times...