Wrong or not they couldn't bloody play in london!
If the london supporters loved wasps so much then they should have gone to support them. Now they won't be able to, tough...
1) High Wycombe is NOT London. Adams park is a poor venue and not ideal for many people - this is why for quite some time wasps fans have been holding out for a move back to actual london. Therefore as Rats said, I don't get why you're trying to judge potential attendance in London by actual attendance in Buckinghamshire. In any case, the capacity at Adams Park is the lowest of any premiership side when last I looked, so we couldn't even accommodate that many more people in the event of increased demand.
2) With Wasps seemingly on the up, with a stronger squad and better performances on the pitch, the atmosphere at the ground has been improving and attendances have been pretty good. rightly or wrongly, many people are fickle and therefore I believe more people would have attended as the club gets stronger and stronger. Many perhaps London or around who used to go but stopped a couple of season back when things got dire. This was another argument for increasing capacity while keeping it within sight of London. In other words there's no way you can claim Wasps have maxed out on their potential London/around fan-base.
3) No club should ever overlook the people who cheer on the club each week. No amount of pragmatic long-term thinking should decide that the fans of 5 / 10 / 20 / 30 years are less important than the potential new fans who perhaps at this point don't even watch rugby. Maybe they're not even born yet; that's how long-term and by extension cold and calculating it seems to long-term fans.
4) This affects players as well as fans. Guys from overseas probably signed with the draw of London in mind; there's no guarantee Wasps will be able to keep hold of key players with such a change which apparently even players have not been fully aware of. If you're Alapati Leiua with all the talent in the word and have just moved to London, would you make the same decision again if you knew you were moving from Wellington to Coventry?
Location and fan base are a key part of club identity. I presume you yourself would not be satisfied with the business argument alone if, to pursue an extreme example, Ospreys decided tomorrow to move to Abu Dhabi simply because potential attendance and financials would be stronger. Yes it's an extreme and exaggerated example but it's still the principle of business over people.
Since the move is in December 2014, what does this mean for all the season ticket holders that cannot afford the trip?
An email has been sent round offering Season ticket holders a refund on a pro rata basis.
