if they took games away and got decent crowds there would be far less angst
Really? Define "decent". The first AKL game got 20,000 and people said that was sharkhouse because Auckland is 4 times the size of Welly and thus only 4 x an average Welly crowd would be acceptable - which would be more than a sell-out at NHS. There seems to be some bad faith involved here.
As far as I'm concerned, enough JAFAs (or Tronians, or Naki types) turning out to make a profit greater than would be attained at the RoF = job done, but you'd expect me to be biased.