Honestly the rate the latics are shaping its little wonder they cant afford the upkeep of the stadium

The times they are a changing

Its a good job the council have waived their £205,000 ground rent every year so far or uncle Dave would really be squealing!

Did those comments come straight from Dave, or via his carer?

Great win yesterday......


for Forest & Bristol City.

Tick tock tick tock tick tock

In more ways than one!

I assume the current contract will have no clause for cost of upkeep therefore, if uncle Dave wants to change the contract then IL can take the opportunity to change or amend other clauses.
Uncle Dave must be the only owner in the world of a sporting club with a statue outside his ground who genuinely begrudges spending money on the club. Never sure if I feel sorry for him or if he deserves my total apathy.

You obviously had a look at the stadium accounts then.

I sure did!

£23,000 per game appears to be quite a good deal, particularly when you consider how much the stadium management company is losing year on year. Factor in our annual rent, the annual loss and the potential ground rent, and it would be akin to sticking an extra £10 on the price of a matchday ticket, or £120 on your ST just to cover those three things. Then of course there's the cost of building a stadium....

Now, hands up all those who still want our own stadium?

Bearing in mind the club makes nothing from concessions, sponsors and the hospitality boxes, it's not a great deal.

The club would much prefer to own their own ground, believe me.

As for Whelan's comments, he can f' off.

Not true, the hospitality revenue comes to Wigan RLFC. What they don't get is the revenue from the bars on the ground and the South Stand bar, but they don't pay the costs.
I suspect some of that may change in the not to distant future.

Assuming the worst and the latics do go down,at what point does it make sense for the stadium company to seek to sell the ground?

Or is that still a way off.

"Assuming the worst and the latics do go down,at what point does it make sense for the stadium company to seek to sell the ground?

Or is that still a way off."
I presume you mean to a housing developer? don't think uncle dave would ever let us get our hands on it.

Whelan deliberately kept the stadium separate from the football club, safe in the knowledge that when he comes to sell the Latics, he will only be selling a football club, rather than a club and a stadium. Its therefore little wonder that when he took a step back, there were no takers for the football club and his grandson took on the role (previous experience = one failed chip shop)

Interesting reading from the Stadium 2016 annual report:

"As a consequence of Wigan Athletic competing in a lower league and the resulting drop in attendances, match day catering declined, as did the stadium hire charges from Wigan Athletic".

It seems Uncle Dave wants the Warriors to make up the rental shortfall due to the on-field failure of the football club. Perhaps he should tell young Dave to stop sacking managers and paying compensation.

So because the Latics are failing on the pitch, that should cost us extra money? Disgraceful!

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.