If a team was to be cut, I would have thought it would be the Rebels, with the Brumbies to then play half their games in Melbourne to try and save some of that market and potentially source from it in the future.
While it would hurt a lot, it's probably the least painful path.
So maybe it's the best of all the horrible scenarios.
The Brumbies have a small supporter base (6000-8000 members at best) and a fickle local supporter base. Take away any "home" games and the supporter base will drop in Canberra. I would envisage that only a small amount of the ex-Rebel rusted-on would jump on the Brumbies bandwagon and the casual supporter numbers would also be low.
It's twice as hard to market an out of state team which the Brumbies would be in Melbourne, and in Canberra it would have a reduced footprint.
So doing the maths, the Rebels would be extinct, and the Brumbies split between two locations would die a fairly quick death in about 2 seasons I would predict.
So the flow on would be 2 less NRC teams and a return the neglectful past for the regions from the ACT southward, as they will again be devoid of any real rugby resources.
Oh, it would hurt a whole lot!
If the ARU cut a team, the reality is a market will have to die to save the rest. There is no magic double dipping going to work.