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Since moving the club from High Wycombe and buying Coventry’s Ricoh Arena last year, Wasps’ owner Derek Richardson has enhanced his reputation as a sporting innovator.

Mr Richardson has effectively (and successfully) tweaked the club’s business model: only around one third of the club’s income derives from rugby as the arena is used for a variety of other purposes, including music concerts – attracting acts of the calibre of Bruce Springsteen – as well as acting as a venue for snooker and darts tournaments.

Earlier this week, Mr Richardson was at it again as a retail bond on the London Stock Exchange. The club hopes to raise up to £35 million, part of which will be used to pay down a loan from Coventry City Council. The bond will pay investors an annual interest rate of 6.5 per cent.

With interest rates anchored at their historic low, and little sign of them heading north any time prior to mid-2016 at the earliest, retail bonds have soared in popularity. A succession of high-profile bond launches from businesses, such as John Lewis, have attracted millions of pounds of investment. In 2012, Tesco Bank was forced to pull its retail bond due to excessive demand: the bond raised £200 million in just two weeks.

A retail bond is a corporate IOU issued to investors upon which the company pays the debtor interest on the loan. Unlike cash bond deposits, however, retail bonds are not covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.

They’re a relatively new means by which companies can raise cash. It’s only five years since the Order Book of Retail Bonds (ORB) was established by the London Stock Exchange, enabling them to be traded much like shares.

Several other sporting institutions, which they’re paying interest rates in excess of eight per cent (and there are plenty of them), will be watching how Wasps’ bond issue proceeds.

Should the club successfully raise the required funds, we can expect a slew of other sports clubs to follow suit. Would-be retail bond issuers should, however, ensure they possess the same diversified income mix as Wasps and ideally have a man of proven entrepreneurial ability such as Mr Richardson at the helm.