This season just been we built all that hype and good will in the Wellington public with the Save the Nix game vs Adelaide, which then turned out to be a cracking match with a massive crowd. There were heaps of people saying "I should come more often" and things like that. We then didn't have another game in town for a month, and all the hype and interest had died down. Plus it was almost Christmas and people had other things on by then. We still got 10k to that game but I think we could have got a lot more than that again if it had been a couple of weeks earlier.
To me that shows exactly why the traveling road show games are bad for the club in the long term. Ultimately it's regular attendees in Wellington who will sustain the club. And marketing and promotion costs build hype for multiple games in the city, whereas in Auckland or Chch they only go for that one game. If someone gets hooked in Wellington they can go to another game in a couple of weeks hopefully. If someone gets hooked in Auckland they have to wait a year.
Of course, the FFA don't see it that way and were making a big deal about us building the brand across NZ so even if WelNix didn't think it was the best plan anymore they might be contractually obliged to.
When the organisation governing the competition you play in puts you on notice to increase your commercial value to that competition, when your main sponsor wants you to have a strong presence in Auckland, and when the failure to do those things means you probably don't have a club in four years' time, you gotta do what you gotta do.