LAST UPDATE | 1 Jul 2020
CHAMPIONSHIPS SIDE WIGAN Athletic have gone into administration as the impact of the coronavirus pandemic starts to be felt in the English Football League.
The club, who won the FA Cup in 2013, will be deducted 12 points as a result of the move, but this will not be applied until the end of the Championship season.
If they are relegated, the sanction would be applied to the start of their League One campaign in 2020-21, but if their results on the pitch are good enough to stay up, it will be applied to the final 2019-20 table instead.
The club, who are managed by former Sligo Rovers boss Paul Cook, are currently in 14th on 50 points, and a 12-point drop would take them bottom and four points adrift of safety.
The news was confirmed in a statement from the club’s joint administrators on Wednesday lunchtime.
One of the administrators from Begbies Traynor, Gerald Krasner, said: “Our immediate objectives are to ensure the club completes all its fixtures this season and to urgently find interested parties to save Wigan and the jobs of the people who work for the club.
“Obviously the suspension of the Championship season due to Covid-19 has had a significant impact on the recent fortunes of the club.
Wigan Athletic has been a focal point and source of pride for the town since 1932 and anyone who is interested in buying this historic sporting institution should contact the joint administrators directly.”
The Latics have six games left to play. The second tier season restarted on 20 June.
The club were in the Premier League as recently as 2013, winning the FA Cup in the same year. They dropped down into League One in 2015 but made an immediate return to the Championship.
The club recorded a net loss of £9.2million in their most recent annual accounts for the year ending June 30, 2019. That was an increase of £1.5m on the previous year.
Wigan were owned by JJB Sports co-founder Dave Whelan until November 2018, when he and his family sold to the Hong Kong-based International Entertainment Corporation (IEC).
There was a further change of ownership on 29 May of this year, when IEC divested its ownership to Next Leader Fund.
IEC said in a letter to fans its decision came “after thorough assessment of several factors, including the club’s financial position, management team and objectives, particularly the promotion to the Premier League”.
The letter added: “There are areas of misalignment in expectations which we feel may hinder our partnership going forward.
Combining with the outbreak of the Covid-19 has created more uncertainty around the financial position of the EFL and the football business as a whole.”
Damian Collins, the former chair of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) committee, said he was sorry to see the news and added on Twitter: “We need a #gameplan for football to help clubs that have got into financial difficulties, made worse by the Covid-19 lockdown.”
Collins has suggested the Government should underwrite a scheme to help save clubs affected by the pandemic, but Oliver Dowden, the Secretary of State for DCMS, has said that “football should first look after itself”.
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Won’t be the last
@Brian Carr: If spurs don’t get supporters into their ground fast they are in big trouble….a massive shiny new stadium with the massive bills that come with it. Liverpool’s owners again showing they are proper business men not gambling on a massive loan to buy a new stadium, they are improving Anfield in manageable stages smart men!
@Peter Hughes: Joseph Lewis owns Tottenham and is worth is around 4billion so I dont think Spurs are in too much trouble for a long time yet.
@Peter Coen: So why did they need to get a 175 million loan from the UK government?
@Peter Coen: they also borrowed over £100m to see them through the current situation. They’ll not be stuck.
@Peter Hughes: and CHAMPIONS!
@Wheresmyjumper: Probably is not really explaining it.
@Wheresmyjumper: Probably the same reason wigan went under, they probably have owners with money but they are not willing to take the hit and are just letting the club sink…..who says the Spurs owner will pump hundreds of millions of his own money in when all the debt is probably under the clubs name, perhaps he will just walk away a bit like the ex Liverpool owners nearly put the club into administration.
@Wheresmyjumper: Wrong move by LFC but they never received a penny in furlough.
@Peter Coen: Yes but he isnt going to keep sinking money into a black hole
Feel sorry for the staff. Only in the prem 7 years ago. Goes to show how bad some of these clubs are been run. Wign are a big enough club to have survived this pandemic if it was run properly the last few years.
@Ken: it’s also a relatively low debt
@Ken: Wigan fans never backed the clubs success or PL journey in sufficient numbers….always a joke following. Basically Dave Whelans play thing till he got bored or saw what was heading down the line….
Wigan has always been a rugby league town. Could never get close to filling their 25k seater stadium during 8 seasons in the premier league.
@Fergus O’Connor: Interesting that since their record tickets sold is 25,133 against United when they were in the Premier League, that’s 5 off the max capacity.
@Marcus Suridius: Their averages every season were 5-7k below capacity
It’s only the beginning, the efl was already a ticking financial time bomb ready to go off before corona and lock down, clubs barely afford to pay wages and staff along with bills. And now with large crowds a long way off being allowed into stadiums till close to or after the new year, clubs like Wigan will struggle to even get the cash flow needed to start the new season while just about finishing this one
Not a fan but sad to hear
Only taken over by new owners 4 weeks ago!!
I remember wigans first season in the p league under Paul Jewell they done incredible to be in the top 10. Amazing what a few years can do in football
Sure a professional football player only costs about £100,000,000 nowadays
@Tony O Neill:
That is precisely the problem!
Relative to Total Income, transfer fees and player wage costs are out of sync with reality for many clubs in the upper tiers of English football.
Covid-19 lockdown hasn’t helped.
Classic catch22 situation; no investment to acquire quality players, the club slides down the divisions; if investment available… lots of income absorbed in higher wages; no dyed in the wool fan base, poor gate receipts from season tickets.
Clubs with good academies, bringing on young talent, seem to do best, plus the ones owned by the Billionaires
Not for the feint hearted, such investments!
And so it begins
All the little Pie-Eaters will start supporting the Manchester teams now.
@Ian Heaton: they do anyway and that’s the problem.
I can never understand why the F.A penalise the club and players and supporter who are probably innocent of all the dealings and the owners get away scot free