Speaking as a qualified accountant with over 30 years in business, and also having a copy of the latest filed accounts, I'd say that was an excellent and comprehensive summation. Spot on, IMO.

If you were Hull FC, you'd capitalise the player values in your balance sheet, and attract very adverse comment from your auditors for doing so. No-one else does that I have seen, although I've seen player "registration" fees prepaid in club accounts.

I usually get hounded off here whenever I post anything remotely financial "facts of life", so I'll leave you guys to it.

I agree it's not a foregone conclusion that a new stadium will instantly turn things around, but frankly I think it's the only lifeline the club has. To outlay cash now and prop the club up hoping the stadium will come off, the franchise will be given and the fans will come flocking would be a risky proposition for most investors.

I think it will, I took the nipper to his first Bulls game last week as I knew he'd be able to see. I made the mistake of taking him to the Leeds game and not 1 of us there could see and i'm 6 foot. I think in close games like the Crusaders debacle lack of atmosphere is crippling us. Especially now fans are scattered all around the ground a great deal more than they were 2-3 years ago. It used to be chav corner generating a din but now we have fans behind the sticks, behind the dug-outs, in front of the old scoreboard (clown corner?)... It's nearly the most common thing said regarding Wakefield fans online - "give them/us a roof!"

I know a great deal of mates and fans of other clubs who go to most games but they won't come to Belle Vue for pretty grim reasons. One lad I know only ever goes to Wakey away games, he's never in his life been to Belle Vue!!!!

I guess that's the crux of it really; the club is limping along and probably losing money right now, with all hopes resting on the new stadium - a very high risk strategy in and of itself.

One view seems to be, for example, that the new stadium will 'attract' higher calibre players. It might indeed pique their interest, but ultimately what attracts high calibre players are salaries and benefits commensurate with their skills and abilities - even if we played in Camp Nou, they wouldn't play for nowt, so we still need to have sufficient cash available to pay the buggers.

Cash-wise, in the absence of a millionaire sugar-daddy, I presume we generate the bulk of our income from ticket sales? That being the case, it would seem that the most urgent task IF we get into the new stadium, is to dramatically increase the number of bums on seats. Does the 'field of dreams' effect that people assume will attract players also extend to new supporters? Will we attract them with the current quality of rugby on display in a brand new venue, or will an injection of cash in the off-season be required to get the quality of players in who are likely to bring new fans through the gates? If that's the case, is it likely to happen? More fans = more cash = better players = better results = more fans = more cash etc etc, ad infinitum.

It seems to me whilst the new stadium is indeed a very positive development, it has thrown the future of the entire club into sharp focus; I'd agree with newwildcat that if it fails, the club fails. Conversely, if the people in charge are able to keep all of the plates spinning sucessfully, we could find ourselves in the rather un-Wakey like position of having nothing substantive to complain about.

If it was happening to another club, I'd find it exciting; since it's us, I'll stick to ting myself.

Speaking from my experience as an accountant who used to work at a football club, i can say players there are considered as 'assets' on the balance sheet and depreciated over the term of their contracts. Whether this is the same in a rugby league club or not though, I couldn't be sure.

lets have a whip round to see if we can force a coalition

Strictly speaking not the stadium itself that attracts players but the fact that a better stadium is a pre-requisite for a franchise, and who wants to commit to a club whose SL future is not assured?

I have no facts or evidence to support this but I would guess gate receipts are secondary to sky money (which I'd guess is approx £1m+/season). Therefore continued existence in SL = sky money = better players = better team = better ticket sales.

How much will we keep from ticket sales etc. at a stadium that we will not own?

think we pay a set amount of rent as per stewarding / staffing level and keep all sales?

maybe

I imagine as the local authority own the ground we will pay them a fee to stage games there. How much that would be - I wouldn't have a clue. Depends on what's negotiated between club and council.

The council will not own the stadium the Community Trust will so any rent will be paid to them. That said, its in the Trusts interest to ensure the clubs operating out of the stadium are financilly viable so the rent must be affordable to the tenant. After all there's no point having a stadium if there isn't a team to utilise it's potential.

Happy to stand corrected.

The issue isn't really how much the club is "worth" (as previous answers have already said it's not really got any real value) but more of how much anyone would need to be able to invest in the club.

Anyone buying the club would need to accept that their investment will be money that their likely to never get a realistic return on - it's not like they'd be buying a Premier League soccer team that has the ability to tap into a global appetite for their sport - which would probably rule out a lot of people.

What it does mean is that any new owner/majority shareholder would almost inevitably be a FAN which can only be a good thing.

As I said on a similar thread a couple of weeks ago, anyone with the money to burn to buy the club would almost certainly want to wait until the franchise decision is known - it's one thing being rich enough to chuck a few hundred grand (or maybe a couple of million) down the drain for a club with guaranteed SL status, but it's another thing altogether if there's a risk of not having SL status.