Winning alone won't do it if people outside Wellington don't even know/care that the team is playing.
Need a marquee
The problem is that for most of the NZ market the only marquees that will work are the ones with a brand, and who appear in magazines like the Womans Day with regularity. I doubt many had heard of Del Piero even. We'd be relying on the media to build hype and we know the media are fickle. So we're talking about the top 0.5% of players are going to have the right name recognition to make a material difference, like Messi, or Ronaldo, or Rooney, or bringing Becham out of retirement. Even if our owners mortgaged their houses and sold their boats and brought in someone like Zlatan Ibrahimovic (who would probably instantly be the highest paid person in New Zealand) you're not going to suddenly see us selling out stadiums as most of the crugby set would simply say who? We could get Paolo Maldini and people within the YF fan base would even say who?
The players who will make the difference from a marketing point of view are simply way out of our price range. So you look to get someone lower down the ranks, but still in the top 5% of players. You pay them a couple of million, hope that they perform and hope that the media gets on the bandwagon. That's a lot of risk. It simply won't work in the NZ market.
As I said before, the way to grow the club is to get into the consciousness of kids. Do a deal with a breakfast cereal company and get them to include Phoenix trading cards, get them posters to put on their walls, let them grow up with a succesfull team and before you know it you have a fan group that have known nothing else but supporting their team.
Not necessarily. There are loads of top players even ex-internationals whose time is about up in the top leagues but who can still run and kick a ball and who quite possibly might relish a season down-under (rather than in China) as the new main man. Somebody not only able to play a bit but also a bit of a character say, who could then be marketed accordingly by the Nix.
Peter Crouch e.g. Or Joey Barton. Or some dude with a Woman's-Day-friendly WAG wife.
Edit: I think Ifill could have been marketed far better than he was. Shoulda had an agent.