The Virtual Terrace • Re: Wigan make massive loss

Sorry but that's rubbish - you can learn a lot from the financial statements which are all lodged and freely available from Companies House, especially if the company is outside the small company disclosure regime. Accountants can't massage the figures that much - if a club is losing money year after year like Wigan tend to do that can't be massaged into recurring profits without it being obvious (e.g. Lenagan writing off loans). Likewise at Leeds the underlying position is that the company is profitable. You can get odd things going on but it's really pretty easy to spot them if you know how to read a set of accounts, moreso if you look at the same company or the same industry over and over.

The problem at Wigan almost certainly starts with them not owning their own stadium - they don't have the scope to generate all the non-gameday revenue that rival big clubs like Warrington, Saints and Leeds do which subsidise the football operation. Obviously those clubs also have the cost both capital and maintenance of creating the stadia but all things considered owning is much better than renting.