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Bit of stadium analysis for the lads #wafc. Though the individual rental payments are not disclosed in the accounts, in the notes it refers to attendance sizes / number if games played being the key driver. Of the £3.2m turnover, only around £800k is rent as such (cont'd)
It is probably a fair assumption to say that rental charge is based on footfall and both Latics and Warriors pay around £400k pa each in a normal year. The other 75% of turnover is mainly generated from catering, restaurant, bar and conference facilities (cont'd)
You may also noticed the stadium naming rights line in turnover, a measly £26k compared to £167k pa the year before. The reason for this is that the naming rights deal expired in Aug 2018, and the rights have been available since that time (cont'd)
So, yes you're reading that right, it has continued to be called the DW Stadium despite DW not paying a penny for the rights for over 2 years, the wily fox. Clearly, this is a missing source of income for any incoming stadium and I'm fairly sure £167k per year is a cheap deal
In terms of costs, wages increased by £300k from previous year, yet there were 12 fewer staff and you'd have to assume considerably less going forward. Admin expenses still rose from £3.3m to £4m and this is not itemised why, there is around £1.5m not broken out
You would expect maintenance costs to be high year on year, but absolute costs (excluding salaries) jumped up by £400k year on year. And I'm no property accountant but a lot of direct costs should be in the cost of sales figure of £700k
Now to the supposed lease. The owners of the DW Stadium are supposed to pay £205k per year to Wigan Council for the 99 year lease, but this is waived in lieu of Wigan Council getting to use the DW facilities on an ongoing basis for nowt
The year before refers to a three way agreement with stadium, Council & Huron investments, which is a Whelan company. Unfortunately, no full accounts but does hold £10m of property. Can't pretend to follow this, but my guess is a surrender of some land adjacent to the Soccerdome
Anyone coming in buying a stadium like this would naturally want to reverse a £1.5m loss. Getting the stadium naming rights back in place could reduce a lot of this, and to a lesser degree, so could increasing the rent, and obviously reducing operating costs to a degree
However, the accounts mention significant fixed costs which (wages aside) will be hard to reduce. Also, it mist be considered that the stadium is over 20 years old and repairs & maintenance costs will only go one way. Which just leaves the bar, catering and hospitality income
Whoever takes it over needs to work that number and somehow get it used more, 7 days a week, not just at weekends, easier said than done in a global pandemic. Income will also have dropped since the rugby moved a lot of their functions to Robin Park (offices, fan zone etc)
I'll happily give people another stick to beat Lenagan with here but from his perspective, if they are paying out based on attendance and not getting anything or only getting a small cut of match day revenue (not sure which applies) then I'm not sure you can blame him for that
It does make it more difficult for the stadium as a company to break even, so you can understans why there might be a need for any potential incumbent owner to increase the rent, maybe in return for increased usage, be that match day or non match day
It is hard enough for a football club to not lose money without the stadium losing £1.5m a year too, so you can't blame anyone for looking at whatever ways possible to mitigate that
It would probably make sense for the rent to be pegged against both attendances and all matchday income generated of all forms, which would encourage fans of both clubs to spend as much money as possible in there, knowing it goes to their chosen club
Enough. Now for #cans
