Heard that from IL at a Fans Forum, great deal. A lot less than the outlay required to maintain, heat, light a 26,000 stadium outright I'd say.

The last published accounts (for the 2009 season - last season's due anytime in the next two weeks) show we paid about £180k for the season which is incredibly good when you consider the costs involved of maintaining and running a stadium.

If you assume an average ticket price of £10, 13 regular league season home matches and 15,000 average crowds then that equates to £1.95m (£1.755m after the 10% deduction). That ignores cup (ignoring Wembley for these purposes) and play-off revenue which you would imagine would take the figure to over £2m. That's nearly half way to total revenue and there's hospitality, sponsorship, advertising, merchandising and SKY TV money to add to that. I've got the latest accounts somewhere and will dig them out and have another look to see if there's any indication in there, but I suspect there's more income going to the stadium company than just 10% of ticket sales and drinks and food on matchdays. I'd be happy to be proved wrong though as it would be good news!

I thought hospitality all went to the stadium company

Interesting, I've been told by the marketing staff that the club get the revenue from the boxes and tables, raffles etc, though the bar revenue goes to the stadium.

The bottom line here is that its all a bit uncertain. Wigan RL is a private company so IL is within his rights not to give a clear statement on what exactly goes to the stadium company but I think it would be helpful if he actually spelled out the detail of the deal.

we also have quite a lot of staff and have to pay for the running and upkeep of Orrell.

I think we have to pay a sum per person who has the hospitality, and we keep the rest.

If we didn't receive any revenue from it, it wouldn't be worth employing the staff to manage it.

I didnt think we did, its all a part of the stadium management isnt it?

It wouldn't make sense though.

Why would Wigan employ staff to manage the bookings and waste time and effort marketing the hospitality for no financial benefit?

Understand that, but what I am talking about is the turnover (income and revenue coming into the club), not the profit after costs (the things you mention would be costs). The c£4.6m turnover figure looks low to me.

get you now, its not bad considering players wages is far less than half of this.