[UK] Wigan, Orwell Symbol of English Poverty, Buoyed by Soccer Club

From Bloomberg

Wigan, a northwest England town best- known for coal mines and cotton mills, is betting the surprise success of its soccer team will help shed a blue-collar image.

Ten years after languishing in the fourth-tier of teams, Wigan Athletic is sixth in the 20-team Premiership, England's top league. Tonight, the club faces London's Arsenal needing only a tie to reach the final of the League Cup. The tournament winner goes on to the Europewide UEFA Cup, where opponents may include David Beckham's Real Madrid.

The glamour of Premiership soccer has helped draw around 300 million pounds ($535 million) of investment to a town used by writer George Orwell to illustrate the poverty of England's working classes in the 1930s, town officials say.

``People have got this vision of Wigan as a grim, cloth-cap mill town, but we're getting rid of the cliches,'' says Chris Ready, a town councilman. ``Everywhere I travel people want to talk about the team. We've put Wigan on the map.''

Premiership clubs receive an average of 67 million pounds in revenue each year, about five times the sales generated by teams in the second-tier league, according to a report by the U.K. unit of accounting firm Deloitte & Touche LLP.

Each year three English soccer teams are promoted to the Premiership from the league below, and Wigan made the grade after the 2004-2005 season. The glory is usually short-lived: four of the last six promoted teams have been knocked back down at the end of the very next season.

Chelsea, Manchester United

The ``Latics,'' the nickname Wigan fans fashioned by corrupting the word ``athletic,'' have been climbing up the divisions since 1995, when the club was bought by Dave Whelan, a local millionaire who founded JJB Sports Plc, Britain's largest sporting goods retailer.

A promotion from the lowest professional tier followed two years later. In 1999, Whelan moved the team from Springfield Park, a ramshackle ground with little shelter, to the newly built 25,000-seat JJB Stadium.

Elevation to the Premiership in May, bringing the allure of contests against Malcolm Glazer's Manchester United and Roman Abramovich's Chelsea, helped drive season ticket sales to a record 13,500 this season.

Playing matches against teams owned by billionaires made Wigan the preseason favorite among U.K. bookmakers for relegation back to the Championship. Instead, the club coached by former Wigan player Paul Jewell won eight of its first 11 games and is level with Arsenal in the standings.

`Like a Dream'

A 1-0 League Cup victory over Arsenal on Jan. 10 means the club merely has to avoid a loss in tonight's second leg to reach the final at Cardiff's 75,000-seat Millennium stadium. The League Cup is open to all of England's 92 professional soccer clubs.

Wigan has two other possible tickets to Europe: winning the Football Association's F.A. Cup in May or finishing among the top five Premiership teams.

``It's like a dream,'' says Caroline Molyneux, chairwoman of the Wigan Athletic Supporters Club, whose membership has tripled in two years to 1,500. ``I was just hoping we would survive.''

Located about 20 miles (32 kilometers) from Manchester, Wigan was once the center of Britain's coal industry, with 25,000 men working in 1,000 pits. The hostile conditions were immortalized in Orwell's 1937 book ``The Road to Wigan Pier.''

Today, Wigan is embracing its new prestige, accompanied by its rugby team's Super League status. Signposts on the approach to the town declare ``Welcome to Wigan, home of Super League and Premiership football.'' Opposite the main railway station, the shirts of both teams are displayed in the window of the tourist information center.

Pier Revival

The pride is reflected in a series of new projects, including a 110 million-pound shopping mall and a 60 million- pound sports training complex. Wigan Pier, the former loading point for the town's collieries and cotton mills, is being turned into a cultural quarter with a hotel and apartments.

``The football has created a real feel-good factor and is helping draw new business,'' says Martin Kimber, the town council's director of planning. ``The town as a whole is now seen to be in the Premier League.''

Premiership status has given Latics fans the chance to return the taunts of Wigan Warriors followers, the local rugby league team that set a record for successive league and cup victories in the 1980s and '90s.

The Warriors, who are also owned by Whelan and share JJB stadium, slipped to a club-worst seventh place in the Super League last season. Some Warriors fans are now turning their attention to soccer.

``I've been getting text messages from my mates saying, `What are you doing going to the football?''' says Keith Williams, a 28-year-old Warriors fan. ``The first few games I didn't sing or shout at all, but now I'm really into it.''