ExclusiveFormer Wigan Athletic owner Stanley Choi says he ‘paid the price’ in Championship club crisis
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“We learned a lesson, I learned a lesson,” former Wigan Athletic owner Stanley Choi Chiu-fai said of his 20 months in charge of the troubled English football club.
Speaking for the first time since the club went into administration under new owners weeks after Choi sold it, he said it was the “wrong decision” to get involved with Wigan in an exclusive interview with the Post.
“To buy, of course, it’s a wrong decision,” he said. “It’s a bad investment, but what can we do? We learned our lesson by paying our price.”
Choi, 51, said that friends had initially approached him with the opportunity to buy into Wigan, describing it as “a good opportunity to grow in the UK”.
His Hong Kong-listed leisure company International Entertainment Corp (IEC) bought the club for £22 million (HK$237.1 million) with the takeover ratified by the English Football League and Hong Kong stock exchange in November, 2018, six months after agreeing a deal.
Choi and IEC entered into the deal knowing that Wigan was losing money and that the outgoing chairman was glad to sell, he had told the media as much after stepping down.