They built two shopping centres!

Well, something has to give soon. How long can the football club survive being run by the Administrator, assuming no buyer comes forward? Not long. Liquidation and winding up to follow? Phoenix club to arise from the ashes?

Where then would that leave us? You’ve got to think that the longer this drags on, the more advantageous the whole situation becomes for IL. If you can call it advantageous. The only option left may be for us to buy the stadium and have the Latics as tenants. Then the hard work would have to be done for us to make the whole operation viable. On our side of things, on average say 14k fans in a 25k stadium and with the football side of thinks, a paltry 4-6k rattling around in it. Not an enviable task, even for someone as astute as IL.

Or we could move. We may well have to.

It's been a while since we've had 14k average. We've plenty to do if we do get control of the stadium.

This is the bit where your argument comes unstuck.

I agree with the gist of your post, but just responding to the question where would we go by arguing that 'it's down to IL to find somewhere' is pretty lame.

It's been pointed out that the last thing Wigan Council will want is an empty, decaying stadium in the middle of town, so why would they facilitate that by agreeing to see another one built? It's just not going to happen unless we leave Wigan, and even then it's very, very unlikely. All of this was discussed over and over back in the days when Whelan was our landlord and behaving like a Victorian mill-owner, but no solution was found then either.

There's no doubt that it's a problem. The Wigan Athletic experiment has ended. Even if they survive this trauma, they'll come back as a minnow club without a pot to p*ss in. But at present, no one else is available to share the stadium with. I agree that it's undesirable, but we won't have any choice. And we've surely more chance of making that arrangement work than we have abandoning the DW and wandering out of the borough.

Why are the economics of the DW Stadium so uniquely bad? It's larger yes than some of the other stadia in the league but not that much and modern stadia have relatively low maintenance costs anyway. So even accounting for that how come the Wicked and Halliwell Jones and Headingley (sort of) are viable with just one primary user but the DW isn't with two?

Rugby without Scrums is not Rugby!

The Councils in Doncaster, Huddersfield, Hull, Salford, St Helens, Warrington and now York have all manage to find sites in their local authority areas as a result of not making the mistake of allowing a individual on a ego trip to have all his own way

But what else can you expect from Wigan Council who among other things are still living in the days of the horse and cart where the building and widening of roads compared to other nearby local councils is concerned!

I’m not from Wigan, don’t live in the town and, whilst my son and his family live in Standish, I don’t know the town that well with regard to suitable sites for a stadium build.

In all honesty, I think we’ll end up continuing at the DW and there’s a fair to middling chance that we will end up owning it. I’m just throwing ideas around for alternatives and at the same time putting my thoughts down in writing as to how complex/problematic the situation has become.

On the football side of things, the longer it drags on without any viable bids for them, it then leaves the door open for some half baked chancers to come along with an offer that is accepted. See Bolton, Bury, Charlton, Blackburn and several other football clubs and where similar situations have taken them.

It’s at that point where we may well be forced to step in and act even if we don’t actually want to.

If you're suggesting that IL should buy the football club as well to try and end this damaging saga, that thought crossed my mind too. Supposedly, he was trying to put a consortium together to do just that, but for whatever reason it didn't see daylight.

I can only assume that, even at £1, Latics are not a snip. The reality of running a modern day football club is a huge and costly undertaking, and that's not just because every pro footballer in Britain, no matter how lowly, seems to price himself at the equivalent of 50 brain surgeons' wages put together, but because of backup staff, travel arrangements, general organisation etc. The administrators have stripped Latics to the bone. The whole thing would have to be rebuilt from the bottom up, and then there'd be the problem of Latics' poor support. Their hardcore fans classify their club as 'special.'. But it's not really. It would take years and years for Latics-type crowds to repay even basic investment.

Sorry if I sound like I'm lecturing, but this is my take on why IL hasn't and hopefully won't make a serious bid for ownership of Latics.

It's all a rancid mess. But it's not a mess of our making, and it's still possible we could end up stabilising things by acquiring ownership of the stadium. What would happen after that is anyone's guess, but at least we'd have somewhere to play.

No problem. It’s my take on things as well. I have first hand experience of just how quickly things can fall apart as I am a lifelong Blackburn Rovers supporter, having seen my first game at Ewood in 1966. I had season tickets at both the Warriors and the Rovers before rugby league gradually took preference.

As you say, it’s a rancid state of affairs and however it eventually pans out, I can’t see many folk being too happy, including IL.

It would be interesting to find out the cost of demolishing the DW and building a stadium that is fit for purpose on the same site compared to the cost of whatever work the current stadium requires.

It would no doubt cost more in the short term but in the long term it could be viable.

Take out the seats in the South & North Stands, replace it with terracing.
Replace some of the seats in the East & West that have seen better days.
Give it a lick of paint.
Rename it.

Jobs a good un!

I think you'll find the Latics will get about double that estimation when crowds are allowed back. Having a 25,000 stadium also means 10,000 can fit in whilst maintaining some form of social distancing. Allowing 100% of your fan base into the stadium means you maximise your income.

Any new owner of the stadium needs to make it available for other money-generating events. Challenge Cup Semi finals and some of these behind closed doors events would be a start, followed by a couple of concerts next summer.

With Latics in the premier league, the need to generate an extra million a year from the stadium wasnt an issue. It is now.

Not sure where all this 'the DW is a white elephant....not economically viable etc' comes from. There is absolutely no need to pull it down / start again / move to a new stadium. This talk is nonsense.

Everyone seems fixated on the annual £1.4m loss the stadium made last year, and cites this as the reason the stadium can't make money. This overlooks a couple of huge issues;
- Half a million quid is depreciation on the fixed asset of the stadium - valued at 22m. This is ethereal, and is an accounting loss, rather than a true loss, especially if the stadium were purchased for only 3 million
- That leaves just under a million in losses, during a time where the stadium has received no sponsorship revenue or money for naming rights due to DW's narcissistic fudge
- Stadium name rights regularly bring in between 0.5-1m quid per year, which almost wipes out any losses
- Then remember how poorly the stadium has been run, by an overseas consortium who were not interested in it.

Run it properly from the UK, use it for RL challenge cup semi finals / England games again / concerts / sell merchandise within the stadium etc, and run the bar, food sales and stewarding properly - ie/ only open 3 stands for the rugby, only open 1/2 for the football depending upon gate etc. Suddenly the 1.4m loss very easily becomes profitable!

IL could, and would, make that happen IMO and the ground becomes key to our future sustainability.

The biggest issue is the administrators insistence to sell the ground as a package with Latics. From our perspective, the best thing that can happen is that this continues to rumble on, and they realise that there are no buyers interest in parting with the best part of 9m quid (4m for the stadium and 5m to guarantee continuing losses as mandated by the EFL) for a club who is expected to be in the bottom division of English football within a year.

The most sensible option is to sell the ground to Leneghan, Latics sell to the supporters club with their 700k investment, and they go cap in hand to Whelan to ask that he props them up and assures their future by providing a gift of around 4m to keep them in business. Whelan appoints a community board and immediately drops out, and away they go! If DW is as bothered about WA as he says he is, then such an amount really is very little considering the tens of millions he has already thrown at them.

I'll give it 2 weeks before these Latics men start tearing into each other over this money they've raised.

Admins giving an interview in The Guardian basically admitting the club could be wound up. It’s a far cry from where they were 6weeks ago when they were almost certainly getting a buyer. I’ve mentioned before the vitriol from their fans was getting unbearable but when you see the clear and sheer incompetence and lies from the admins it’s bloody understandable. I’m annoyed for them and I’m nowhere near a Latics fan!

Fingers crossed it gets sorted but it’s looking bleak and almost inevitable right now.

I wandered onto Cockney Latic to read the latest and saw they were hoping it affects us badly, enjoying that Barnsley are in trouble, and of course they loved it when Bolton hit difficulties. I feel bad for any staff affected and creditors who don't get paid but not bothered at all about the fans. They would love it if that happened to us.

Lenegan offered to buy the ground but was turned down if the club was wound down the offer to buy the ground would still be on the table .maybe at a lower price .

The administrators can't conjure up plausible bids from nowhere. Just because they were once confident but now aren't isn't an indication of anything other than that nobody is interested.
These protesting fans still haven't taken the time to work out what administrators do or who they report to.

Whelan has been very quiet since his initial comments. Maybe he could put in a bid to buy his statue, because no new owner will want that outside THEIR stadium.

How can any body commit to buying Latics when at the present moment no fans allowed and with the virus escalating in the North West Wigan Warriors will be under the same restrictions IMHO we will not see fans back on the terraces before April next year.

Always feels like it's a war for some of those guys.

I remember when they used to sneak on here. It wasn't pleasant.

Why is the EFL treating the Latics different than how they treated Bury FC?

That's were you are wrong been granted 1000 on the 30th September Wigan verses Saints.

I wouldn't bank on that at the moment. Seems to be a growing sense of panic in the air.