Quote ="MattyB"The other team who share our Stadium had a massive turnover of £43m in 2010 but still came out with losses of £4m. So much so that their owner had to tranfer £48m of debt into shares which wrote of the debt the club owed to him.
Is it all fooking worth it?
Meanwhile we're making a modest (but growing year on year since IL) profit, investing in other areas slowly, (Central Park Education Centre / South Wales Venture), our training facilities at Orrell have often been quoted as the best in the league by far and we attract the best support in the league by far (along with Leeds) and have done since the mid eighties.
We're doing alreet.
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The point I was making is that when people talk about increasing players salaries to do this sustainably you have to increase revenue accordingly (otherwise you end up with the situation at Wigan Atheletic that you refer to). Having your own facilities such as a stadium provide greater opportunities to do so. Obviously Warrington's gate receipts are some way below Wigan's yet other evenue streams allow us to make up the shortfall.
This has also been done to provide profits in something like four of the last five seasons whilst I think Wigan have only posted a profit once in that period.
I don't think Orrell has recently been quoted as the best traiuning facility in the league by anybody outside of the Wigan club. It is falling further and further behind facilities other clubs have (which I'm sure is one of the drivers behind the move of facilities to Central Park; 3G pitch etc). I've seen it up close plenty of times.
There is no doubt that Wigan are doing better than alreet in comparison with its peers in Super League however rugby league needs to up its game considerably going forward to compete with external forces.
As a companison the top 15 revenues for rugby clubs in Europe are:
Position Club 2009/10 Revenue (£m)
1 Toulouse 27.4
2 Clermont Auvergne 19.5
3 Leicester Tigers 18.5
4 Stade Français 18
5 Racing Métro 92 17.2
6 Toulon 16.4
7 Brive 16
8 Montpellier 14.8
9 Biarritz Olympique 14.5
10 Perpignan 12.9
11 Northampton Saints 12
12 Bayonne 12
13 Castres Olympique 11.8
14 Harlequins 10.6
15 Gloucester 9.4
That is what we have to compete with.