It's a shame that you have to defend yourself in this way, though I must say you do it well. Unfortunately there now exists on here a cohort whose sole purpose is to put the rest of us to rights, which is why I seldom post these days.

At least they aren't a payday loans company like some SL clubs are getting involved with.



And I can't agree enough with this.

We've made around £1,000,000 from selling players, we are being run well financially so surely we could have taken a hit when it comes to a main sponsor.

Let's say for argument sake 'Houses for Homes' offered £100,000 for main sponsorship, would you take a hit and accept £50,000 for Vodafone?

In my opinion having a blue chip sponsor makes the sport look a lot more professional and hats off to the Dire for getting Emirates on board.

hahaha, where has the idea come from that blue chip companies will pay less than national companies? it doesn't work like that, bigger companies don't pay less for the privilege of sponsoring a sport team if anything its the complete opposite, bigger budgets and they pay more. www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sport/ ... 6770811760 (not sure in the link will work) but could only wish we was in the same position.

hahaha, where has the idea come from that blue chip companies will pay less than national companies? it doesn't work like that, bigger companies don't pay less for the privilege of sponsoring a sport team if anything its the complete opposite, bigger budgets and they pay more. www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sport/ ... 6770811760 (not sure in the link will work) but could only wish we was in the same position.

If cohorts exist, then you and your cohort was very aggressive and offensive to anybody who spoke against you last season. You were happy to slap down anybody who disagreed with you, and did not like it when people spoke against you. Typical bullies who cry foul when they get challenged.

You literally can't criticise the club for anything on here without the "Wigan fans moan about anything" brigade having a go. Wigan have just won the double and reading between the lines we have struggled to obtain a main shirt sponsor (the lateness of the shirts being released plus the one year deal). Wev also got a local estate agents as the sponsor.

If it is wigans policy to promote local companies then fair enough, but I think if there was a blue chip company offering a 3 year deal the club would snap their hands off for it. Personally I think the club is run very well on most areas, but obtaining a shirt sponsor is definitely an area that requires improvement.

Nail on head

i agree some fans moan about anything and everything becomes the managements fault, but this one is a complete fail and no amount of sugar coating can stop that. Be interesting to see what the goal was for sponsorship and what we have actually achieved.

How the can you possibly know that it's a complete fail when (correct me if I'm wrong) you have no idea at all about how much money was exchanged or what other options were on the table? I don't usually like to take the 'they must know best' line but IL is a millionaire businessmen and managed to get Warner brothers to sponsor us for a game last season at fairly short notice, making god knows how much money off the 'Superman Shirts' into the bargain.

At risk of sounding like a happy clapper, I think in the time he's been here he has more than earned the benefit of the doubt about decisions we don't know the ins and outs of. Wasn't he being criticised as nothing but a moneygrabber who was only out to "trouser money" 3 months ago?

There you go, if Warner Brothers would sponsor us why settle for a local housing association?

How many bought the shirt because it looked great with the Superman logo on? Would they have bought the shirt if it had Brenda's Barms on the front?

read any of my post and you will see i back IL with pretty much everything but on this occasion its not good enough, by the way i am not even blaming IL its not his job to get a sponsor its the marketing and commercial departments job. All for a local based company sponsoring the club but only if their big enough such as JJB back in the day. seriously how much money could they offer for the sponsorship? compared to companies which have 50million+ every year for marketing?

Evidently Warner Brothers wouldn't sponsor us for a full season, or not at a decent amount of money at any rate. You can't seriously believe we had the option of someone of that calibre with a good amount of money on offer and IL turned it down. He's a shrewd businessman with a massive vested interest in making money for the club. He will surely have made this decision because it was the best option on offer. It's not like blue chip companies have generally been falling over themselves to sponsor RL clubs, have we considered that it's a very difficult thing to do, and that Emirates was a massive one-off?

No I don't think IL turned down an option of that size.

So your telling me 'Houses for Homes' is the best we can do?

The criticism isn't that larger offers from blue chip companies have been turned down in favour of this deal, it's that the Wigan RL brand should be able to attract the best deal possible from more notable sponsors, especially the year after we have just done the double. Nobody knows how much this deal is worth or what other offers were on the table, but on the face of it not enough has been done behind the scenes to attract sponsorship. It's also not the first time it's happened (the 2010 replicas being released without a sponsor because the deal with Mecca bingo hadn't been sorted, for example).