Nomadic Wasps’ latest move carries a real sting for loyal supporters

Club or franchise. London Wasps will find out in December when they make the bold move from Adams Park to the Ricoh Stadium in Coventry.

Drawing on London area support, their move to a hotel, casino and bigger ground will require the diehard fans to make a round trip from Central London of almost 200 miles. Will they or won’t they?

So far, the ‘won’t’ camp have been most vocal.

At the end of January, when Leinster play at the Ricoh in Round Six of the European Champions Cup, they will know if the fans make the club or the club can make fans. From fan babble online Wasps' Field of Dreams will either turn them into a rugby powerhouse or break them.

Owned by Irish Insurance millionaire Derek Richardson, Wasps are a modern-day tale of pragmatism and business metrics beating tradition.

The club’s life has always been nomadic, from Sudbury to Loftus Road to Adams Park and now the 32,000-plus Ricoh Arena in the new year.

But Richardson may take hope from the past. Following the move from Loftus Road to Adams Park in 2002 the crowd figures reportedly went up by 31.8 per cent.

When Wasps beat Munster in Coventry in the 2007 season, 21,506 turned out in the Ricoh Arena with no breakdown on how many were supporting Munster.

"To be honest, watching Wasps playing in Adams Park was a bit of a pain but they still managed to pull 6,000 to 8,000," says Rob Henderson the former Ireland and Wasps centre. Henderson played when the club was at Loftus Road.

“When you are a tenant and when only an eighth of the revenue (required) is generated on match days it is non-sustainable. The decision to move to Coventry, I believe, was a purely business decision.

“Nearly all (professional) rugby clubs nowadays are franchises and there are very few in the original formation of the local club. That’s an unfortunate sign of the times. When you need five or six million a year to run a club you have to be financially viable.”

Existing supporters

This month Wasps made a £30 million offer to purchase a 50 per cent share in the Ricoh Arena stadium and on October 7th

Coventry City Council

approved the sale. The first home match will be on December 21st against London Irish, also no longer located in London.

Nor are London Welsh and if you take Allianz Park to be in the Greater London area neither are Saracens, leaving just Conor O'Shea's Harlequins the only Premiership team in the English capital.

Many Wasps fans are aggrieved. The club was uprooted and moved almost with no consultation or discussion with existing supporters, who claim it is as bad as football when Wimbledon were moved to Milton Keynes.

Almost 3,000 Wasps fans signed a petition to protest against the move.

Cash-stricken Wimbledon Football Club controversially moved 50 miles north from their London base and were renamed Milton Keynes Dons. Coincidentally, they have been awarded three matches in next year’s Rugby World Cup.

But Wasps were reportedly losing £3 million a year at Adams Park and were an hour away from administration when Richardson took over, this latest move towards the midlands ending a 12-year tenure at the old ground.

"It will be interesting to see if diehard fans make that round trip on a cold wet, winter's evening," says Henderson. "But it was Wasps Dai Young (rugby director) that said 'I'm shopping in Marks and Spencer now when I have been in Lidl for three years."

The Irish rugby models are different to those clubs owned or controlled by individuals in France or England, with Paul Dermody, the marketing man who moved from the GAA to Leinster, explaining that the RDS venue is vital to Leinster's success.

Through data mining Leinster have a good idea of who comes to watch matches. Some 57 per cent of fans are from Dublin, five to six per cent from both Meath and Kildare and smaller percentages from elsewhere around the province.

Season ticket

In 2005 the club had 200 season ticket holders. They now have over 12,000 and with the increased capacity at the renovated RDS they hope to raise that number to over 18,000.

“We don’t think we’d have that in a different location,” says Dermody. “But different clubs have different metrics. What sets the provinces apart is their dual mandate.

“It’s not just to get attendance figures but to also grow the game of rugby. That’s not something English clubs concern themselves with and in that respect maybe they are more transportable.”

The clubs in the midlands have responded coolly to the move with local side Coventry RFC, who play in the National League, welcoming Wasps, although they were irked that they played no part at all in what were secret discussions over a nine-month period.

From the offended fans’ point of view, the secretiveness of the negotiations introduced another level of callousness to the decision.

Northampton chairman Allan Robson was more forthcoming on the move. "I'm not worried about it affecting our attendances. We have a very good business model and tremendously loyal fans," said Robson. "I'm not sure it will ever be a derby. Leicester Tigers will always be a lot more meaningful for Northampton."

Wasps expect that their move to the Ricoh Arena will increase turnover seven-fold and soon allow them to compete financially with their Midlands rivals including Leicester.