"We're not selling any home games to Australia. But playing in Singapore or Malaysia... that's a possibility if the sponsorship arrived." - Rob M
He was specifically talking about league games.
I'd really like to understand the strategy for taking games away from Wellington.
Surely the future for the club is playing to decent crowds week in and week out with perhaps one or two game max away from Wellington. I cannot see any benefit to the club at all in taking matches away other than one off financial benefit which we have already seen will reduce over time as the novelty factor wears off. They've had three very big crowds away from home but each had odd individual factors. Chch was opening of the new stand at Jade Stadium, Dunedin was the opening of the new stadium and Eden Park was one of the first events after the redevelopment. Aside from that crowds have actually been fairly average.
You weaken the local attachment with the club, potentially weaken local ticket sales etc. For all the talk of "building the brand" around the country that's plainly BS - even if you get fans in Hamilton you don't get any benefit from that unless they turn up to games in Wellington. Bulk of funding comes from the Aussie TV deal. Aside from cash I don't see any actual benefit for the club overall. Now if this is just about cash that's fine, but I seem to sense that they want to build a fan base in those cities which doesn't make sense to me
My only thought is that this is leverage against the stadium for them to start looking at giving us a better deal there.
SE Asia has to be a red herring unless we were playing Sydney with Del Piero say, no-one is going to pay for us to go and play in Malaysia.
Was there any talk about what their strategy is for improving crowds in Wellington? If they get that right then they don't need to worry about taking games away - seems more time is spent on plotting how to take games away rather than build fans at home!