I'm a bit surprised at the number of people who seem to have entirely forgotten just how close we were to not having a club anymore, and who also don't seem to appreciate just how precarious the club's position continues to be.
So for now, Yes the travelling circus is the reality, time will tell how effective or otherwise it will be. Does that mean everyone has to love the idea and spend Christ knows how much trekking from one end of the country to see a home game?
Then again, perhaps I am just not a real fan.
This is entirely missing the point. The club as of right now, has a future of 4 years. To have anything beyond that, they have to hit off-field targets, and convince the FFA that the club brings commercial value to the league. In addition to that, the club's main sponsor wants them to have a presence in Auckland for their own commercial reasons.
If the club can't do these things, then success on the field alone will not be enough. \
And finally, no-one here is telling anyone to like this reality - hell, Rob Morrison has told the club members that saving the club may involve things none of us like - but if we want to continue to have a club, then we have to get through this.
To increase the Television revenue, people outside of Wellington have to watch Phoenix games on Sky. Not enough of them do at the moment, and the club has to figure out how to make them. Will playing up to 4 games away from Wellington help there? I don't know. But clearly they have to do something to raise their profile outside of Wellington to get those TV numbers up.
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.