Warriors report £600k loss for title-winning year

[DaveO]

Not having your own upto date stadia affects you also.

when you have your own stadium ,instead of rent you pay all the bills on the stadium.ie maintenance ,staff,rates etc and believe me it won't be cheap,and that's if you've paid for the stadium,no loans outstanding.

But you also have access to the revenue from food and drink sales on match days, the ability to gain sponsorship for naming rights plus other sponsorship around the ground, the ability to rent out use of the pitch to another tenant or for use for one off events such as concerts, the ability to rent out the corporate facilities for private functions, club museum, etc.

As long as the stadium is fit for purpose and in a suitable location the benefits of owning a stadium outweigh the negatives. Of course financing it is an issue and most sports clubs would be looking for grants from their local council. Wigan council are still pretending they're poor until Labour return to power (if). At the moment I can't see the club getting much support in a search for a new ground and there doesn't seem to be an obvious location for one. Of course further down the line, if the club is successful in gaining use of Robin Park Arena in one form or another that is a potential option for developing into a stadium, assuming the athletics facilities had somewhere suitable to move to.

How do you know any of that is true? You are just making a load of assumptions, principally that owning a stadium results in a net profit (or break even) after all expenses and loan payments are taken into account.

It cost £25m. You don't get cheap deals on business loans but even if my some miracle you got one at 2% that is £500K a year to stump up before you factor in maintenance, staff costs and so on. It's probably at least double that.

The cost to Wigan RL for using the the DW seems like an absolute bargain to me and the least of our concerns. Gate receipts from one match alone should more than pay for it.

[jao711]

Got to agree with Dave O on this one.I love your casual aside about financing being an issue,you bet it is.I don't think you get grants for a one club stadium,needs to be dual purpose.Idon't know if that covers two rugby clubs or two football clubs.I also think that facility has already been used as Wigan MBC own almost 15pc of the DW.Sport England don't dish it out willy nilly.Forget Robin Park as a new stadium,can you really see the council getting involved with another stadium next door to the DW either financially or planning wise.

[Wes]

My cousin works for Saints in a good position, 1st hand their stadium makes them more than it costs to maintain.

The amount of revenue streams it opens up is unreal, even basic things such as businesses renting the boardroom for meetings etc.

They have something going on their everyday.

It may be hard to envisage but I think IL could buy robin park and build 3 stands that come out and above the running track and rent the track back to the council that wouldn’t cost anywhere near £25m. The logistics work as does the security in that location as we know from the DW.

[thegimble]

Easy enough to Say Saints ground makes them more of a profit than cost to run but who paid for the ground. We have no asset or prime land that say Tesco would want to build an extra and a stadium.

Fairly certain that Saints did not finance the ground either any of it or majority of it.

[fozzieskem]

There’s always money for this sort of thing,but the DW is already there so Wigan would have to self finance it I suppose which would be eye watering for our sport

[Wes]

Easy enough to Say Saints ground makes them more of a profit than cost to run but who paid for the ground. We have no asset or prime land that say Tesco would want to build an extra and a stadium.

Fairly certain that Saints did not finance the ground either any of it or majority of it.

McManus put £8m of his own money into the ground.

Having your own stadium is called an investment, if it makes a profit it goes towards paying for itself it is a valuable asset and the land it sits on will go up in value.

Suppose it is similar to leasing a car pay a fee every month but it is never yours buy one however and you make similar payments except that in time those payments will stop and the car is yours.

[thegimble]

Easy enough to Say Saints ground makes them more of a profit than cost to run but who paid for the ground. We have no asset or prime land that say Tesco would want to build an extra and a stadium.

Fairly certain that Saints did not finance the ground either any of it or majority of it.

McManus put £8m of his own money into the ground.

Having your own stadium is called an investment, if it makes a profit it goes towards paying for itself it is a valuable asset and the land it sits on will go up in value.

Suppose it is similar to leasing a car pay a fee every month but it is never yours buy one however and you make similar payments except that in time those payments will stop and the car is yours.

So he put in roughly 33% of it. Seen it cost 30 million.

Problem we have where would the other 22 million from. Because I can guarantee you in todays climate of cost control in Tesco will not put that sort of money in to build a store. As they have effectively stopped building stores at the level they did.

I am not against getting our own stadium but who is going to finance it now. As you say the owner put in 8 million the rest has to come from someone else and we have no asset to sell of that magnitude.

[mikey]

Saints ground cost around 30 million they reported a small profit of around 10000 this year so in anther 3000 yrs they will break even

[doc]

My cousin works for Saints in a good position, 1st hand their stadium makes them more than it costs to maintain.

The amount of revenue streams it opens up is unreal, even basic things such as businesses renting the boardroom for meetings etc.

They have something going on their everyday.

It may be hard to envisage but I think IL could buy robin park and build 3 stands that come out and above the running track and rent the track back to the council that wouldn’t cost anywhere near £25m. The logistics work as does the security in that location as we know from the DW.

My cousin works for Saints in a good position, 1st hand their stadium makes them more than it costs to maintain.

The amount of revenue streams it opens up is unreal, even basic things such as businesses renting the boardroom for meetings etc.

They have something going on their everyday.

It may be hard to envisage but I think IL could buy robin park and build 3 stands that come out and above the running track and rent the track back to the council that wouldn’t cost anywhere near £25m. The logistics work as does the security in that location as we know from the DW.

As the stadium ages maintenance costs will increase over the years. Saints also rent out their ground for use in reserve grade football, much the same as LSV. We would need to find a similar tenant and off the top of my head I cant think of one locally who hasn't allready got an arrangement. I believe the money made from functions at the DW helps pay for its upkeep, reducing maintenance costs for both the rugby and the football.

Building stands over the track would make for a pretty crap athletics stadium. Can't see it being allowed by the athletics bodies as on a rainy day you would have 3/4's of the track dry yet the straight used for the 100m under water.

In addition the stands would be up so high an in such close proximity to the pitch that fans would have an awful view of the match.

Personally I don't think Robin Park is an option for our own stadium as there is not enough space on the site to build additional stands. I can't see Whelan selling us any of the land next to the DW as it will lose him a revenue stream. Neither can I see the council allowing us to do anything that would jeopardise the use of the stadium as an athletics venue.

[thegimble]

From what I can gather Tesco paid a substantial amounts for the site and part paid the building of the stadium. Only thing Saints or owner put in was 8 million.

Problem is for anyone doing the maths it cost Saints 30 million to build the stadium that did not include the purchase of the land to build it on.