General rule of thumb unless you were building something like Tottenham's ground was around £1k per seat so 20k stadium = £20m
Would imagine it's considerably cheaper if you have terraced areas like Saints/Wire which I'd prefer

How’s it a meaningless comment? It’s now a soccer stadium that you occasionally play it when things don’t clash with the soccer. If they do clash with the soccer then your fixture has to move, this has happened numerous times as we all know. Who shared Central Park, can you remind me please? Thanks.

You wouldn't have had the stadium if Wigan hadn't agreed to play there too. It's as simple as that, pal.

Yes, DW did sh8t on Wigan a couple of times afterwards, until they finally called him out in law, and then it ended.

Pretend it's otherwise if it makes you guys feel better, but you exist because we allowed you to.

Whelan did not build the Stadium as some people in Wigan seem to think.

The Stadium which cost £35 million was not fully funded by Whelan as his personal financial contribution was only around 20% of the cost with 80% of the finance coming from various grants which included a 14% (£4.9 million) share of Wigan Council.

How on earth could Wigan Council have ever allowed Whelan to own the Stadium when 80% of the cost came from elsewhere and not from his own pocket?

If Whelan had given more than his paltry contribution of only around £7 million, the town could have had a better designed Stadium like many other towns instead of the blan concrete design it ended up with.

As the Latic's were on the up at the time, Councillors on Wigan Council got like you have said, ideas of grandeur that the town would become a big football town like Blackburn, Blackpool, Bolton, Burnley, Preston etc. but they forgot to remember that unlike those towns which had a history of being bigger clubs, it also had unlike them, a leading and famous Rugby League club whose attendances have been better than the Latics for most of years.


From what I was told at the time, the promise of corporate hospality and free tickets for games was the lure for Wigan Councillors support of Whelan.


And why when he sold the Latic's, did he not excude the Stadium from the sale and instead donate it to the Council so that both club had equal rights as it should been when the idea of a joint stadium was first suggested at the meeting in 1994.

A spot on assessment.
Although my concern is this- the Bahrainis know nothing about the history of our town nor our sport. They probably have little to no understanding about what rugby is, apart from their vague perception of union type (Which being in the Middle East they are likely to see as the epitomising posh western English culture. So unlikely to view it favourably as they don’t know what we’re about.

Then add to the mix that the main way they’ll understand our town, culture and sport is listening to the numpties who watch latics! You only have to look at the police statements and the trouble the morons were all causing at Bolton to see that it’s a different breed of folk who watch them. Look at the majority of their fans in the pub before a latics home game...not all but a good 80% are visible simpletons...you can see why they have such issues with the rugby.

So my problem is this. Bahranis will have been told all sorts of nonsense as fact...how we’ve tried to kill their club, how during their recent plight leneghan tried to buy the stadium to bankrupt them etc etc etc. They start to believe the nonsense and think even more poorly of rugby than they did without having any balancing conversations with others or understanding how important we are to the town. They antagonise the rugby and do everything they can to make things difficult. That raises their stock with the idiot latic fanbase. They probably expect that to make them more successful but it does the opposite- it just isolates latics fans to their 7k core as a fraction of strange people with weird ideas. ...I wonder if the Bahrainis know that in the last 5-10 years the latics faithful were singing to opposition fans “who’s the P-ki in your nets!” as they had a Muslim goalie you’d expect that sort of racism well and truely hidden now

What happens in the next 5 years. We probably end up leaving the ground which makes us weaker. Bahranis believe the latics nonsense that all their problems were due to the Chinese...not losing over a million quid a month as they are not viable as a championship club. They get promoted, wage bills increase again to 18-20 mil a season just to scrap to avoid relegation from the championship and after two or three seasons they’ll inevitably pull the plug again, leaving latics on the brink of extinction and us with reduced support etc at Bolton. So their boom and bust every 3-5 years helps no one...what would actually be better is someone making them a sustainable L1 club bringing through their own players and generating some meaningful pride in the community club.

What really miffs me is all of this could have been avoided had the admins accepted leneghans offer for 3.5mil on the ground! I really don’t understand how they turned that down when it was half a mil more than the bahranis paid for the whole lot. Recognise they took on guarantees for the future losses of the club, but that outcome really hasn’t helped anyone.

That’s the point I’ve just made above. Unfortunately it’s also all perpetuated by what the latics fans communicate to the bahranis and what they take as fact.

The problem is, apart from their fans and new owners, we all know that they are not sustainable above a league one level without haemorrhaging serious money! Their new owners are throwing stupid cash at them atm to ensure they go up...yet when they go up they’ll be back to a wage bill of 18-20mil a season (which will still be the lowest in the division) and will result in them scrapping to just stay in the championship with losses again at over a million per month!!

The only way they break that cycle is if they get lucky and can bounce straight back into the prem in 1-2 seasons, yet that’s extremely unlikely as there’s 16-18 clubs in that division all capable and attempting to achieve the same thing!

So the reality is we’re back to boom and bust, and how long the bahranis will be prepared to lose money at a rate of knots while mostly being a yo-yo league 1/championship club as the last 10 years have shown!

The likely reality is the current owners will do exactly the same as the Chinese in 3-5 years, and the whole thing repeats itself.
The best thing for both clubs would be shared ownership of the ground with the council...similar to Huddersfield 40% each ownership with the council 20%.
it stops the stadium being at risk of the financial troubles of either club and the daft cycle that latics are in damaging both clubs long term future.
As leneghan pointed out the best thing for them in the long term would also be being owned by a Wigan / local U.K. consortium who make them a sustainable club.

Until all of that happens the rollercoaster continues but we’re unfortunately taken along for the ride as their owners also own the ground.

I'm hoping the Bahranis pick up the team and move them out of the area ala Wimbledon/MK Dons leaving a cut price stadium that we call our own, make some terracing instead of seating and then let FC Latics play at Robin Park but only when neither our academy, under 16s want to use it.

I think we all know the answer to this which is because the football club are essentially worthless.
Selling with the stadium he recouped about 22mil of the money he had put into the club (on the balance sheet the stadium alone was worth about 25mil at the time)
Without the stadium he wouldn’t have sold the club, or would have got the max of a million quid for them.

It’s the same reason the bahranis paid 3mil for the club. They knew it was the way of buying a 20mil stadium for a pittance. They’d have paid no more than £1 for the latics, which is what they essentially did as the admins made it a condition of stadium sale

Tbh that’s also one of the outcomes I could see in all of this, which isn’t even on the radar of the standard tic fan!!
Once they reach a point of realising that it is the clubs location, fanbase and interest in football in the town which inhibits their ambition, they have essentially two options- get out like the Chinese or you could easily see them say “let’s recoup the purchase price by selling the stadium to this other club (rugby) and take the football team elsewhere” as per the MK done arrangement.

Well this post is really dragging out all the idiotic vitriol isn’t? The cycle continues of both sets of fans having a go at each other, thinking they have the moral high ground. All reminds me of the workers having a go at each other for their conditions when it’s the employers who set the wages. It’s successive ownerships of both clubs that have driven this fan on fan hatred. All roads lead back to Whelan anyway.

I believe that the owners of Uncle Joe’s were told who to chose as a sponsor.
They wanted both but Latic’s wouldn’t have that.
They’ve stuck with the rugby and we’re then asked to leave their premises

The guy who told me this is usually pretty good with information like this.
I hope that this isn’t true but in the current climate it sounds about right

Leave which/who’s premises?

Sorry that was poorly written
The Latics representative was asked to leave the sponsors premises

Correct, Whelan included the Stadium in the sale of the Latic's as he knew that that any potential buyers, especially from abroad would only want to buy a football club which owned its own Stadium.

Apparently, the reason why it took so long for administrators to sell the Bolton Wanderers football club as their Stadium was not included in the sale due to the fact that it is not owned by the football club.

In other words, without the administrator including the stadium in the sale, the Latics may have ended up with new owners no richer than those who now own Bolton Wanderers.

In football, its not just about owning a football club, but where ever possible, also the buying of the property assets that go with the football
club.

In Wigan, things could have been different, but for the stupidity of what took place in the late nighties!