the honest truth is that as wigan are well supported you would need a 22 -25 k capacity stadium, ala the DW, that would cost about £25 -£30 million. With no realistic prospect of a supermarket helping and no massive assets, Wigan (or any club in your position) would be mad to spend that sort of money when they have a stadium of those specs at their disposal already. The DW is a great stadium, more than fit for purpose.

Precisely, the only downside being it isn't ours.

Not sure about that, and their outgoings would be large. As W/L Andy rightly said on another thread "Turnover is vanity". The Latics have very large debts. Uncle Dave could write them off or convert them into shares to improve the balance sheet but even so, this is a club that can't survive in the Premiership in the long term. Sooner or later Dave will not able/willing to prop the club up and the club will slump down to at least League 1. There must be a big risk it will go bump at some stage.

I don't think the stadium would cost £10m to buy from an administrator but even if it did I think IL could find a way of financing it. A phoenix Latics club would need to rent it back from IL as well, don't forget.

Even if the Latics didn't go bust, the dynamic of the relationship would change in a post-DW/post-Premiership era. I think we'd get a far more co-operative approach from them anyway. Here in Sheffield the Blades are very supportive towards the Eagles, there's no reason why a football club and rugby club can't get along and once the glamour of the premiership is out of the equation permanently for Latics I think the relationship would improve a lot.

What are the advantages of our own stadium? Ignoring the costs of buying one, we'd also have to pay for the upkeep and improvements. Whereas we lose some match day revenue and corporate facilities and such like.

But seeing as we have a great deal to rent, surely it's a better option financially overall?

As I have been discussing on the Saints site. At Wigan it is a cost based model in that we pay a very low percentage (10%) of our gate money for use of the stadium. However, we don't pay for things like pitch maintenance & restoration, floodlighting etc.

The disadvantage of course is that we cannot earn the extra revenues from conferences etc which ownership would give us.

However in the coming months there will be interesting developments on business revenue streams for the club which should help negate the fact that we don't own the stadium.

....

That is what I would expect to happen given the situation we are in and I am pretty certain there is a lot of untapped earnings potential from the fan base on its own.

It really doesn't matter if you own the stadium or not. What matters is your turnover and profit on that turnover.

In a Wembley final year (which is a big earner for any club who gets there and earns a club more than a GF appearance) Wire made £200K on a £6m turnover. We made £100K on £5.5m in the same season without the Wembley bonus so clearly this should show people owning a stadium is not the cash cow people seem to think it is.

Rouges, did IL mention the kind of figures getting to Wembley entails at the shareholders meeting? I'd be very interested to know and I am certain IL has said in the past what I say above about a Wembley appearance being worth a lot of money to a club.

If Wigan RL were to have it's own stadium in the town then it would be a second stadium.
The local council would not even consider a planning app let alone a governemnt appeals body.
Neither stadium would be profitable as they would both be competeing for the same corporate pound.
Having two separate stadiums in Wigan is an absolute non starter!

As for what the future holds with the DW, well that's another matter altogether.

I'm still hopeful that Whelan will follow through with his promise and give the stadium to ourselves, the Latics and Wigan council. All holding an equal share of the stadium. That seems the fairest and best option IMO.

The DW is a cracking stadium IMO.

Rather than thinking about building another one, IL should be looking to engineer a situation where Wigan RL are joint owners rather than tenants.

Having said that, and being serious for once, there is really no issue with renting providing it's on favourable terms, which it appears to be for you lot.

The DW is a cracking stadium, but it has to have at least 18k in it otherwise is just feels totally empty. A big stadium is great to have but when its less than half full it feels (and looks) awful.

But assuming planning permission is granted as required, those revenues could be very profitable. For example, Saints could apply for a performance licence and have gigs or other shows there on top of holding weddings, conferences, parties, etc and the ongoing use of the stadium cafe and shop. That's on top of any extra matches they may hold. While there is the matter of upkeep to consider that should be minimal for a good few years as it is a brand new facility. I think, though, what is really good about owning your own is the control you have over your own destiny. I think that's priceless because it allows all the above plus more (for instance, we can play extra matches at the stadium without seeking approval from our landlords or co-owners or whatever).

To be fair, unlike say the HJ, the new Saints stadium looks nice enough to hold events and gigs in. Could be a good moneyspinner for Saints and help offset the low ticket income due to the poor supporter base (sorry but I couldn't be positive without a dig to balance things up )

Wasn't their a caveat in the planning approval that distinctly prohibited concerts at the new stadium?
As for the extra matches, you do know that the play off games generate no revenue from ticket sales for the home clubs and that all the receipts are pooled and divied out as prize money dependent on the final placings after the play offs. So that would just be friendlies and the WCC. The WCC is Superleague/RFL event and as your new stadium (I don't think) has no undersoil heating I wouldn't imagine them taking the chance on playing that game there.

As you have stated the BIG advantage is non match day revenues from conferences etc, but I have heard a rumour that St. Helens Town FC may play their games there, but that won't generate much cash.

IMO the top 3 stadia in superleague are :-

!. The KC
2. The DW
3. The Galpharm

The DW loses out on the top spot because it isn't wrap-around.

BTW Size matters!