St Helens and Warrington have to be congratulated that they do own their own stadium and credit to St Helens that it is the better stadium, at first I had doubts about the 18.000 size, I felt 20,000 would have been better, but on reflection on the past few seasons it is better to have a stadium that is running to close capacity at the majority of games than such as The Giants in such a large football stadium looking more than half empty all the time.

Interesting over Mr Coleman, good on him, but when people are protesting outside St Paul's in London about the way money is made in financial circles we all soon are willing to close our eyes when we benefit.

Our owner in London has made his money in the oil markets, not a favourite industry with costs of petrol we pay, but the personal money he has pumped in is amazing and it even more next season. Currently we are looking at a 15,000 new stadium which is perhaps like Salford but like Warrington can be developed and extended as needed/

If I was a Wigan supporter I would be very disappointed now such a leading club and not owning their own stadium, many in London like being at The Stoop, but sadly the marriage has not worked and the sooner we leave the better and one day join St Helens and Warrington as stadium owners.

This is great news it basically gives the club a datum to become a profitable club from now onwards.
The two significant items in the statement! Is that we have No bank debt and No directors loans meaning no significant liabilities as we start the new season in the new ground.
The new business model must be very attractive to sponsors, lets hope the fans turn up in excess of 12000 to back up our directors financial commitments.

All very nice, we are a mega bucks club, with owners richer than abramovich and the man city rag heads put together. But the important wquestion that I cannot believe hasn't yet been asked is...... Can we now afford cladding????

I dare you to tweet that question to @Saints1890! G'won! Dare ya!

I wonder if Rogues practices being bitter or if it comes natural being a Wiganer. It's great to be supporting a top club with great finances and a new wholly owned stadium we dont have to share with a football team. It's even better knowing plenty Wiganers living in Billinge helped us pay for it , even in just a small way.

I opened this thread and was just wondering how many posts in it would be before Rogues posted something that looked like a vague insult or negative insinuation about Saints.. I bet when he read the article he nearly choked on his mushed up evening meal.

Anyone ever seen the Liverpool video , '15 minutes that shook the world' ? Swap the Everton fans for Wigan fans and the Alex Ferguson parody for Rogues and you can imagine he's like that everytime Saints are on TV ... they even have a Rat Boy in that vid too

Best. Thread. Ever.

Having skimmed the thread it would seem that Saints have restructured some debt and traded some debt for ownership. I would like to assume that a good deal has been had, but given the banks are not going to be keen to provide a loan to a loss making business, the terms could be worse.

Hopefully it's better for Saints and so good for RL.

Anyway, back over the hill to read the pointless repeat thread about stadium ownership v rental, or should that be capex v opex spend?

The biggest problem for Wigan RL is next year if the Latics get relegated. DW will lose his premiership funding and could be possibly going to Ian Lenegan for increased running costs. As Wigan has very insignificant asset value, this could damage profit margins, a couple of bad seasons and reduced attendances Ian Lenegan will have to dig deep on a stadium he dosn,t own.

He explained it to us at the shareholders meeting. It was the final payment for his purchase of Wigan from DW. He also explained Wigans tax liability for the image rights payments that most clubs are likely to face and the fact that Wigan made a profit on the 2009 season, would make a profit in 2010 but expect to make a loss in 2011 due to quite big investments being made that would bring profit to the club in further years.

It was a very informative and interesting meeting.

It will be a very informative next meeting if you ask what plans are in place to get the players to fulfill their contracts eg: Barrett, J Tompkins and Sammy Rodent, in Joel's case I'm not taking the "P", have a nice day

Wigan RL has a fixed agreement in place (it's either a 25 or 50 year, it wasn't brought up at this years shareholders meeting) whereby they pay 10% of their gate receipts for the use of the stadium, but things like pitch maintenance & renovation, floodlight costs etc, are covered in that 10% figure.
As a cost based model it is a superb agreement, but as a revenue based model we lose out on things like non matchday opportunities.

Hence Wigan RL diversification and investment into other areas, which will become apparent in the next year or so.

Union?

From the annual accounts,Wigan made a net loss of £540k y/e 30 Nov 2009 and a net profit of £38k the following year.At 30 Nov 2010,they had negative net worth of £2.69m(ie liabilities exceeded assets)