No I'm a coward at heart! You do it, you're a girl, can get away with it!

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)

Wowsers. For comparison, what is our net worth? Are we worse off?

Wiganers had better be careful what they wish for. A relegated latics could easily drag the goons down with them. Their minimal margins will soon be wiped out and instead of the current situation where football subsidises the rugby, could easily end up with the goons having to prop up the latics

Not necessarily - the premier league cashcow getting carted off to Maccie D's might be a major blow to Latics, but there's no reason at all that they couldn't still do financially quite nicely in the Championship or even League 1 - revenue streams in footie are much bigger even at the lower league levels than Superleague could ever dream of. MK Dons run a stadium about the same size as the Piedome in League 1 on less than 9K a game for instance.