The 'metrics'. are a bit of a sad joke really.
Back when all the 'metrics' stuff really got going, just out of curiosity I did some analysis of relative attendances back in 2015. From that I found that only two clubs in the A-league's history had a better population capture rate than the Phoenix (=average attendance/season vs available population catchment). They were CCM and North Queensland Fury. The nix got a bigger proportional hit rate than all the rest of the teams.
Sure the Melbourne and Sydney Clubs get more numbers in basic terms - but their available populations are 10x higher. If they were performing up at the same kind of capture rate that Wellington has got they'd be pulling crowds of around 100,000. It annoys me that people accuse Wellington of delivering small crowds etc - that is just crap. Wellington is just a smaller population base. Only CCM and North Queensland were more successful in getting crowds to games (in proportion to their populations).
Its clear that Wellington are being held to deliver crowd attendance levels that nobody else is, and that proportionately at least we're already way above the A-league average for that anyway! Of course that implies fairness is a principle that applies here - far from it I reckon.
Oh and guess what - the worst performers weren't even the Knights! That honour fell to Melbourne City.
Now - this stuff came from an analysis in 2015, and when I look at the average attendance figures just cited by Blew2 I can see very little difference there. I'm sure our average attendances must have dropped a bit though - hardly surprising given recent results and the overwhelmingly negative 'Doom' media). But for what its worth (which doesn't seem much) we're still performing better than average for crowds in proportional population terms.
Much this. And CCM and Newey get fans from both Sydney teams as they are within easy driving distance (2hrs or less).