Will Wigan Warriors' Camp Nou game draw a Super League record crowd?

He is predicting a “spectacular” event at Barcelona’s Camp Nou when the Warriors face Challenge Cup holders Catalans on May 18.

And with droves of Warriors fans heading to Spain, in addition to the ‘neutrals’ and the Dragons supporters, Lenagan is hopeful the crowd may eclipse the record 25,004 which watched Wigan’s derby with St Helens in 2005. He said: “This has that charisma about it, that buzz about it.

“I know thousands have booked flights from Wigan already, whether that’s three, five or 10,000, I don’t know.

“There is the probability that Catalans will take 20,000 there.

“And it’s been said the Catalans will play in the colours of Barcelona. Who knows? We could have 20 30 40 or 50 thousand people there, that would be a really good, a spectacular day for Super League.”

Wigan launch the new season against St Helens on January 31.

It is their earliest ever start in the ‘summer era’, done to accommodate a 29 round campaign – padded with seven additional ‘loop’ fixtures – and five-time play-offs series.

Lenagan admits the season would, ideally, be shorter and has not ruled out in a reduction for 2020 if the finances don’t take a hit.

“We’ve got to see what attendances look like under this structure,” said Lenagan, a big critic of the previous Super-8s structure which was ditched as part of the shake-up which saw Super League move away from the RFL’s control.

“If we could get back to four less games, say... but you can’t solve all the issues in one year.

“But certainly moving forward, I think there’s a desire to keep the revenues the same – and if that’s off 24 fixtures instead of 28 or 29 – then yes, we would rather do that.” In the last few years Wigan have suffered six-figure losses – which Lenagan has plugged from his own funds.

And with a new structure, and gauged on season ticket sales so far, the club owner is far more optimistic for the upcoming year.

“We’ve set out our stall to break even this year and to make money from next year onwards,” said Lenagan.

“We’re tired of having to prop it up because of mistakes in organisation – and the Super-8s was the worst of them all.

“We’ve seen season ticket (sales) diminish for three years and whenever we did the survey, we were always told the same thing: ‘We don’t know when we’re om holiday, we don’t know when we’ve got games.’

“It was always the Super-8s which killed us.”

In a wide-ranging interview which launched a media day at the club yesterday, Lenagan also said he didn’t expect any more signings to be made before the start of the season.