Trouble is the further down the leagues they drop, the more games they have to play and the pitch situation gets worse.

Yeah, that too.

It's a very strange situation to be in. The Latics will find their income streams so much lower than the good old days of the Premier League, so will want to find other ways to prop up their balance sheet.
It's not as if we just rent, say, a tennis court for a couple of hours, and can shop around for the best prices.
But we also shouldn't have a gun put to our heads to just pay more.
I wouldn't be happy, but could understand if IL went down the ground sharing route.
But I'm sure he's done his numbers and he will know what the magic number is per game that makes him either build his own ground, or borrow someone else's.

It's a very frustrating situation and it's hard to come up with solutions given no one other than Dave Whelan and I.L seem to know the full details of the apparently "favourable" deal that we get. Knowing Dave Whelan though I'd suspect there is only one winner in the deal. I can't ever see Latics getting back into the prem and the way things are going after this season they may not even make it back into the championship and like other's have said that will leave Whelan with no option to try and squeeze more money out of the Rugby. Also, even if Leneghan did want to bank roll our own stadium (which realistically I doubt would be viable) getting planning permission and an ideal location would probably be impossible.

Given the financial difficulty Bolton have been in recently though I do sometimes kind of wish we could tell Whelan to shove it and start to look at potentially playing games at the Macron, Extreme I know and not ideal but I can't think of anything that would wind Whelan up more than us cutting the chord and handing money to their only real rival.

I understand the sentiment, but with crowds at the DW dwindling, how many Wigan fans would be up for travelling to Bolton to watch games? I can't see it.

plenty travel, I know a lot who wont go to the DW after central park, I dont agree with moving out of Wigan but dont agree with Whelan also.

I'd guess more would boycott playing in a different town though in comparison to the numbers who've boycotted the DW.

This talk by Whelan of us paying more could be positive if Lenagan drives a hard enough bargain. If he's to pay more towards the upkeep of the stadium then he needs to get some written guarantees that our games won't be moved under any circumstances (only the referee of our game or both clubs in consultation with the RFL should be able to postpone matches). If he can also get a deal in place where Wigan make some profit from the kiosks and bars then all the better.

If on the other hand we agree to pay more and still end up getting messed about then people are going to be even more frustrated then they are already.

It all depends on the original lease agreement. If there are no clauses regarding upkeep / increased rental payments then IL can tell DW to swivel.

There is a solution to this, IL to buy 50% of the stadium company.

IF we decide to move also depends on IF we are tied into a specific tenancy term on the JJB. We may have to buy ourselves out of an agreement

A move to Bolton would make us a laughing stock. We already were after the Widnes debacle and it's completely incomprehensible for Wigan to play home games in any other town than Wigan.

I tend to agree with an earlier poster in holding DW to ransom. Wigan clearly signed a tenancy agreement (as must of Latics) in it would and should of stated the amount paid towards ground upkeep etc. the astute and smart move would be to put conditions on upping that sum such as no game to be rescheduled for any reason other than a refereeing one, including Challenge Cup and play off games.

There's plenty of others you could think of I'm sure but although we may not like what DW has done/doing with regards to the stadium, we still need to keep him sweet (to an extent). Like it or lump it he helped save the club once upon a time.

I do think a stadium of our own would be viable in the right location and right financial situation for the club. Something like this takes years of planning and financial projections to ensure we don't end up down the proverbial creek without a paddle. IL is clever and smart enough to know this and it may well be something the club is/has looked in to.

Only if it is used for something other than 14 home fixtures a season, otherwise it becomes a money pit. The DW cant break even with over 40 games a season played on it.

Take a look at the situations with the other SL clubs:

Leeds - Share with RU
Hull - Tenants who share with football
Salford - Share with RU
St Helens - Liverpool reserves play there
Leigh - Tenants who share with Man Utd U23s.
Huddersfield - Tenants who share with football.
Castleford & Wakefield - Grounds not up to standard

That leaves Warrington as the only English SL club that have a ground up to standard and don't appear to share their pitch, although the stadium is used extensively for other activities.

There's more chance of IL buying the loss-making DW than building another stadium, as the additional revenue stream required to maintain such a stadium just isn't there.

So it's generally agreed, then, that the pitch issues at the DW are more about drainage than about the number of football and rugby games played on it?

Well surely it would be much cheaper to spend money on fixing the drainage issues than building a new stadium, which seems fantasy talk anyway. If DW wants us to pay more, couldn't it be contingent on the drainage issue being addressed (which, after all, would be in everyone's long-term interest)?

They need to raise the pitch imo. It would cost initially but reduce the long term costs of replacing the pitch every year. MU obviously did it when you look at the steep drops at the edge of the pitch. Taking player welfare into account is loose the front couple of rows of seats and raise the pitch above the water table.

As for the tenancy agreement IL is a smart bloke and will have a decent legal team advising him. I have learnt to trust that he will do the right thing for the club.

That makes sense, Trainman. Although I would say that in my view, that slope at OT, combined with a very narrow in-goal, and the proximity of the wall, make it unsuitable for rugby league (and less than ideal for football, too). For a club with Man Utd's money, though, nothing that couldn't be sorted.

And for sure, why not the same kind of thing at the DW?

Given it was Whelan's penny-pinching in the first place that allowed the thing to be built too low to the water table and without adequate drainage, I'd put the costs squarely on him.