I know that any thread discussing RU generally descends into bickering on here . This isn't really about the game itself, it's about the strides one RU club has made in the past year, and what (if anything) can our own clubs learn from what they've achieved off the pitch. So, going back six months and Wasps were playing at Adams Park, Wycombe, with an average gate of roughly 6,000-6,500. They made the decision to move to the Ricoh Arena in Coventry, playing their first game in December and buying 50% of the stadium. Their attendances our now around the 16k mark. Financially, according to a recent BBC article, they've gone from second to bottom of the Premiership in terms of revenue generation, to second highest in Europe. www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-union/32476299 The article also points to additional sources of revenue generation; a hotel, casino, conferencing facilities, concert venue, restaurants. How have Wasps increased their fan base by so much? Are our clubs not being bold/risky enough with their decisions? Is it just a general apathy towards marketing and PR? The RL club most similar to this model is Leeds. But are the rest of our clubs missing a trick with additional revenue generation? Are our clubs content with just the Sky money and money from their supporters?

I know that any thread discussing RU generally descends into bickering on here . This isn't really about the game itself, it's about the strides one RU club has made in the past year, and what (if anything) can our own clubs learn from what they've achieved off the pitch. So, going back six months and Wasps were playing at Adams Park, Wycombe, with an average gate of roughly 6,000-6,500. They made the decision to move to the Ricoh Arena in Coventry, playing their first game in December and buying 50% of the stadium. Their attendances our now around the 16k mark. Financially, according to a recent BBC article, they've gone from second to bottom of the Premiership in terms of revenue generation, to second highest in Europe. www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-union/32476299 The article also points to additional sources of revenue generation; a hotel, casino, conferencing facilities, concert venue, restaurants. How have Wasps increased their fan base by so much? Are our clubs not being bold/risky enough with their decisions? Is it just a general apathy towards marketing and PR? The RL club most similar to this model is Leeds. But are the rest of our clubs missing a trick with additional revenue generation? Are our clubs content with just the Sky money and money from their supporters?

I don't know anything about the Wasps deal save what I've read, but the comment that if all is as it appears to be, then the deal will have cost an arm and a leg is indisputably true. So their gates have initially gone up. So what? The main questions you would need to be able to answer are:
1. What does it cost to service the investment/borrowing? because those charges need to be paid before there is any surplus.
2. Who put up the money? Because if there is a profit at the end of the day then the "investors" will want it. Unless there is a billionaire who is happy to lose many millions a year, permanently, just cos he likes Wasps.

If there really is that much money to be made from casinos, hotels, Zumba nights or whatever at the Ricoh then how come no shrewd billionaires or other companies national or international were remotely interested prior to the Wasps deal? Yet there is, apparently, not only enough money to be made to service the acquisition finance and running costs, turn a healthy profit for investors, but also to make Wasps a wealthy rugby club out of presumably the small change.

I'm not remotely buying into this hype. It is all spin. I don't blame Wasps as a club for taking advantage of it but there are no lessons to be learned here.

Presumably the leisure bond issue is a way of getting some or all of the cash back to those who funded the purchase ASAP. All it then does however is pass the servicing of the bonds on to the next generation of people in charge of the club, who are faced with making sufficient money to be able to pay the return to investors.

Course, there's a cynical view to be taken here. Leisure bonds don't - AFAIK - have any cover under the FSCS. So if you sink your money into one and Wasps are unable to pay a return on it, you've got no compensation in the way you would have if you'd kept that money in your bank account and your bank had gone bust. So a couple of years down the line what's to stop Wasps running themselves into the ground, liquidating, phoenixing under a different company structure/directors and the bond holders ending up with nothing?

I'm tempted to say it shows you can polish turd. But that would be infantile & show my jealousy of yawnion crowds.