After a difficult season, former Premier League club Wigan Athletic have now been relegated to League One.

There is now reported financial pressure on the club and talk of a potential takeover of the club has started. This would see the Wigan Warriors’ DW Stadium have new owners as well with Wigan Athletic’s current owners the owners of the Stadium.

This comes after talk that Warriors Chairman Ian Lenagan could buy the stadium the two clubs share.

These were entirely shut down at the time but was not the first time this has been suggested. In 2020, Lenagan wanted to become owner of Athletic with the following statement made:

“Being born and bred in Wigan, Ian Lenagan and Gary Speakman understand what both clubs mean to the local community.

“We strongly believe that Wigan Athletic is better being locally-owned.

“As sustainability and ownership of the stadium is equally important to both clubs, we are currently working with our longstanding advisers KPMG and talking to external parties.

“Our intention is to identify other investors quickly and start due diligence on the football club with the intention of making a bid in due course.

“We have made the administrators aware of our interest and hope to explore this with them further over the days ahead.

“Wigan Warriors and Wigan Athletic are both local sporting institutions and it is our belief that this is a unique opportunity here to bring the ownership of these two great clubs together under one roof, each operating independently as before, but under a Wigan Sporting Partnership banner.

“It is envisaged that each club would retain all its training grounds, management and facilities.”

With a takeover of Wigan Athletic underway, there has been some suggestions that Wigan and Ian Lenegan could be involved but Wigan Today’s Wigan Athletic correspondent Paul Kendrick has said there is no rugby element in the takeover.

So, Lenegan will not be buying Wigan Athletic it seems.

With the Takeover underway, the new buyers will become the new owners of the stadium though Wigan Council are still the landowners.