Never good to see a top SL side making a loss, however it can be put down to a few things.

Widnes - crowds are down, I suspect they'd be paying Widnes for usage of thier stadia (can someone confirm/dispell this?)

Stadium - They've invested a lot into the new stadia, which I'll not go into the bleeding obvious why.

Trophyless - Yep, some fans won't of been going to Sts matches due to not having won anything for a few years. I'm 100% positive Sts will win a trophy again in the next year or so, so that should change.

C'mon, someone tell me I'm wrong

Trouble is the results are for the previous year.

It is a bit of a worry but hopefully within three seasons Eamonn reckons we will be back in the black.

Next year obviously we will make a loss because of Saints being at Widnes but with new backers and sponsorship deals because of our new stadium this should be good for the club.

You're wrong.



These accounts are for the last season at KR. This season's accounts will look like a car crash.

How will that happen?
The accumulative losses over the last five years is almost £3.5 million and that's before this years losses.
It was stated on Red Vee a few months ago that it could take around 10 years to make up those losses, and that's if things go well.

Sports teams are generally a very bad investment. People have a go at the management of other clubs (and sometimes their own) but the reality is I doubt that that anyone involved in owning any SL side is in it for money. The question shouldn't actually be about when Sts make a profit - the only real question is whether the losses are sustainable.

I thought the finances had been brought under control by Mcmanus? The club will start to improve the finances when the new ground is pulling in revenue; but it will take some time to cover those debts.

Its worrying when you consider that fans wanted to stay at KR until new ground was ready
these figures show that had they not sold knowsley road then saints would be showing a £3.1 million loss
But very astute buisness men never tell you the true picture i.e the percentage loss to turn over was it a 1% loss or a 50% loss the figures they give are are excuse figures, like we had a big loss last year so we cant spend on players.
you wont be getting a pay rise we have no money, they wont have acounted into these figures the money tesco have paid to build a supermarket on the carpark of the new ground.

From the figures shown, the loss was £1.38m from a turnover of just £4.83m, which is staggering.
I don't think that Tesco paid Saints any money. They just put some money into the whole site development, as did Saints and the Council etc.

It would be interesting to know what the actual cash outflow is (rather than the "loss" which is an accounting term and may include provisions and other non-cash items). Presumably it's quite a large figure over recent years. Is McManus stumping up the cash to keep the club ticking over?

Wigan are in no position to crow. Our turnover is suspiciously low, I suspect the deal with DW's stadium company is a lousy one.

Lenegan is happy with the deal. Turnover looks low because we don't get a lot of the incidental income from things like food & drink sales, but that's countered by the relatively low expenses.

If we owned the DW, we'd have a much higher turnover, but much higher expenses.

Sorry Rogues rephrase that we will be making a profit.

You're right that our costs are lower than they would otherwise be and you're right that Lenegan has said he is happy with the deal. I still suspect it is a lousy deal though, our turnover figure suggests we are giving up a lot more revenue than just food and drink sales.

10% of tickets sales aint it?

Heard that from IL at a Fans Forum, great deal. A lot less than the outlay required to maintain, heat, light a 26,000 stadium outright I'd say.

The last published accounts (for the 2009 season - last season's due anytime in the next two weeks) show we paid about £180k for the season which is incredibly good when you consider the costs involved of maintaining and running a stadium.

If you assume an average ticket price of £10, 13 regular league season home matches and 15,000 average crowds then that equates to £1.95m (£1.755m after the 10% deduction). That ignores cup (ignoring Wembley for these purposes) and play-off revenue which you would imagine would take the figure to over £2m. That's nearly half way to total revenue and there's hospitality, sponsorship, advertising, merchandising and SKY TV money to add to that. I've got the latest accounts somewhere and will dig them out and have another look to see if there's any indication in there, but I suspect there's more income going to the stadium company than just 10% of ticket sales and drinks and food on matchdays. I'd be happy to be proved wrong though as it would be good news!

I thought hospitality all went to the stadium company

Interesting, I've been told by the marketing staff that the club get the revenue from the boxes and tables, raffles etc, though the bar revenue goes to the stadium.

The bottom line here is that its all a bit uncertain. Wigan RL is a private company so IL is within his rights not to give a clear statement on what exactly goes to the stadium company but I think it would be helpful if he actually spelled out the detail of the deal.

we also have quite a lot of staff and have to pay for the running and upkeep of Orrell.

I think we have to pay a sum per person who has the hospitality, and we keep the rest.

If we didn't receive any revenue from it, it wouldn't be worth employing the staff to manage it.

I didnt think we did, its all a part of the stadium management isnt it?

It wouldn't make sense though.

Why would Wigan employ staff to manage the bookings and waste time and effort marketing the hospitality for no financial benefit?

Understand that, but what I am talking about is the turnover (income and revenue coming into the club), not the profit after costs (the things you mention would be costs). The c£4.6m turnover figure looks low to me.

get you now, its not bad considering players wages is far less than half of this.