Whelan deliberately kept the stadium separate from the football club, safe in the knowledge that when he comes to sell the Latics, he will only be selling a football club, rather than a club and a stadium. Its therefore little wonder that when he took a step back, there were no takers for the football club and his grandson took on the role (previous experience = one failed chip shop)

Interesting reading from the Stadium 2016 annual report:

"As a consequence of Wigan Athletic competing in a lower league and the resulting drop in attendances, match day catering declined, as did the stadium hire charges from Wigan Athletic".

It seems Uncle Dave wants the Warriors to make up the rental shortfall due to the on-field failure of the football club. Perhaps he should tell young Dave to stop sacking managers and paying compensation.

I don't think we have been given all the details of the deal with the stadium company. I think our published turnover is too low for us to be getting 100% of the gate receipts. I suspect the stadium company takes a cut. That said, I don't think it's a bad deal, other than the issues around priority over matches. We get to play in a Premiership standard ground (so we can have 20k+ crowds for our big matches) without a lot of the costs that come with that. Saints fans made a lot of noise over how with their own stadium they would be a richer club than us, but it has proved much harder than they thought to make the stadium pay. As Langtree Park ages (and it doesn't look to me to have been built to anywhere near the quality standards of say the DW or the Macron so I would expect it to age quite quickly compared with the DW or Macron) Saints will have some serious maintenance and refurb costs. The Saints club continues to run at a loss, when you think about how low the SC is this really does show that the ground is seriously detrimental to their financial position. I would not want to be in their position, the club is not financially viable without handouts from the owners at the moment.

Hopefully if Latics are relegated this will prompt a serious discussion with the stadium company. I suspect there is a deal to be done around the RL club paying a higher fixed annual payment and/or a contribution to a better drainage system in return for a better position on fixtures and the ability to keep more of the cash generated if we get bigger crowds or put on events at the DW.

That sounds a feasible way forward to me. IL is no fool; I'm sure he's on the case.

BTW, hadn't spotted you sigs before. You really found some prize quotes there! Hilarious!

Get the naming rights and call the stadium, the Douglas Stadium, so we can be the Riversiders again.

If the Latics get relegated they won't want us generating cash out of the stadium as they'll need all they can get.

Fixtures will be even worse as well as they will enter the FA Cup earlier and will also play in the EFL Trophy.

I think we've just got to let IL sort all this out. He's the businessman AND a massive fan but one who can take the emotion out of this.

It seems that we're getting a prety good deal, but get the hiccup over fixtures once a season. Other than giving other clubs' fans a glimmer of something to try to wind us up its not that much of a ballache tbh