Wigan Into Administration

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Krasner who is one of the appointed administrators for Wigan being interviewed in Durham right now on BBC.

Hope that’s where he lives and he isn’t on a ‘trip’ to a football club nearby 😂😂

Looked like those town houses down from the station
 


Grumpy Old Man said:
Looking at their accounts, I'd say the ground is owned by the rugby club. The property values just aren't big enough, and are all short leaseholds.
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Wrong. The football club own the ground and two training areas, one of which they bought from Bolton. The rugby club have a long lease to play at the stadium that was a key part of the planning permission granted.

I grew up in Wigan and have many Wigan-supporting friends. This has come completely out of the blue, and it is thought to be down to China's crackdown on Hong Kong, where their holding company and owners (and their money) are based. The change of ownership is a change of holding company, rather than person. The same bloke who bought them in 2018 is still the owner. Rather like SD forming another company and selling us to them.

The club was sold debt free in 2018, and was seen as well run. Yes, they make losses, but in the thousands per week, rather than the £500K a week we were losing. They had found their natural level, which was a club too good for L1, but every season in the Championship would be a struggle. At the time of Admin, they had won their last 3 games without conceding and were moving rapidly away from the relegation zone. Prior to lockdown, they had won several games on the bounce.
 
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martin_s_buckley said:
Wrong. The football club own the ground and two training areas, one of which they bought from Bolton. The rugby club have a long lease to play at the stadium that was a key part of the planning permission granted.

I grew up in Wigan and have many Wigan-supporting friends. This has come completely out of the blue, and it is thought to be down to China's crackdown on Hong Kong, where their holding company and owners (and their money) are based. The change of ownership is a change of holding company, rather than person. The same bloke who bought them in 2018 is still the owner. Rather like SD forming another company and selling us to them.

The club was sold debt free in 2018, and was seen as well run. Yes, they make losses, but in the thousands per week, rather than the £500K a week we were losing. They had found their natural level, which was a club too good for L1, but every season in the Championship would be a struggle. At the time of Admin, they had won their last 3 games without conceding and were moving rapidly away from the relegation zone. Prior to lockdown, they had won several games on the bounce.
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Interesting stuff mate. It's always good to get facts from local people and fans who are close to the situation rather people who look in from outside.
 
I wouldn't be surprised if more clubs go under at the end of the current season, It'll be interesting to see how the EFL deal with it regarding relegation..
 
martin_s_buckley said:
Wrong. The football club own the ground and two training areas, one of which they bought from Bolton. The rugby club have a long lease to play at the stadium that was a key part of the planning permission granted.

I grew up in Wigan and have many Wigan-supporting friends. This has come completely out of the blue, and it is thought to be down to China's crackdown on Hong Kong, where their holding company and owners (and their money) are based. The change of ownership is a change of holding company, rather than person. The same bloke who bought them in 2018 is still the owner. Rather like SD forming another company and selling us to them.

The club was sold debt free in 2018, and was seen as well run. Yes, they make losses, but in the thousands per week, rather than the £500K a week we were losing. They had found their natural level, which was a club too good for L1, but every season in the Championship would be a struggle. At the time of Admin, they had won their last 3 games without conceding and were moving rapidly away from the relegation zone. Prior to lockdown, they had won several games on the bounce.
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I've dug more. Wigan Athletic Holdings (the football club) do not own the ground. That is owned by a sister company Wigan Football Company (which is actually a property company), which gets rental income from both the football and rugby clubs. As far as I'm aware, that company isnot in administration. Both are subsidiaries of a Cayman Islands company, Newworth Ventures Liimited, which is in turn owned by the Hong Kong Company, where a previous minority shareholder is now magically the majority shareholder. Wigan Athletic Holdings is even more of a basket case than we were. Over the 17/18 and 18/19 seasons, its losses were more or less the same as its turnover, despite a large surplus on player trading. This screams of chucking out a loss-making football club to retain just the property side.
 
It was all set up like that by Mr Whelan a long time ago. He made repeated promises to transfer ownership of the DW to WAFC, but at the end of the day, this was his way of doing it. As you have rightly pointed out, both are owned by the same individual(s), just as they were when Dave Whelan was owner.

If due diligence wasn't done, you could end up with a situation where someone pays top dollar for a football club, only to find the ground and land wasn't part of the deal.
 
Summerbee said:
A timely reminder to us all of being careful what you wish for. I'm sure that Wigan's far-east owners would have been welcome with open arms by many football fans.
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SAFC is already on the exact same trajectory as Wigan. The current set of imbeciles have just lost about 70% of the clubs fanbase/income due to their utter incompetence and lies.
 
Thrall said:
Fans became to involved and interested in the political side of the game. Once it was just about the chairman putting his had in his pocket, now it's everything backroom.
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Thrall said:
Fans became to involved and interested in the political side of the game. Once it was just about the chairman putting his had in his pocket, now it's everything backroom.
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Looks like fans weren’t interested enough more like.
 
martin_s_buckley said:
The club was sold debt free in 2018, and was seen as well run. Yes, they make losses, but in the thousands per week, rather than the £500K a week we were losing.
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Jim White interviewed someone on his show this morning who provided the following information:

Dave Whelan wrote off a £90M investment in the club.

The current owner has ploughed in over £24M in the form of a loan on which interest is being charged.

They need further financing just to complete this season.
Sterobbo said:
Sky sports reporting 10 interested parties. Surely one of them would rather buy us?!
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I'd be surprised if there are more than a couple who are genuine.

The sale of a football club always seems to attract an assortment of loons and cranks.
 
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