Background and career
David Whelan (born 24 November 1936) is an English businessman and former footballer. During his football career, he played for Blackburn Rovers and Crewe Alexandra. Whelan is the former owner of club Wigan Athletic, having also been the chairman of the club for twenty years, before passing the position over to his grandson, David Sharpe, who eventually passed the ownership over to International Entertainment Corporation.
Whelan was born in Bradford and raised in Wigan. His forebears hailed from County Tipperary, Ireland.
Whelan played 78 times as a left back, scoring three times for Blackburn Rovers and was a member of its 1960 FA Cup Final team, which lost 3–0 to Wolverhampton Wanderers. Whelan himself did not complete the game, a feisty challenge from Whelan on Norman Deeley culminated in the Blackburn man being withdrawn before half time after suffering a broken leg. Whelan's injury is one of many serious injuries suffered by players in the 1950–60 era and was known as the Wembley hoodoo. Following his leg break, Whelan was sold to Crewe Alexandra, where he made his debut on 23 February 1963 in a 4–0 first round League Cup defeat at Port Vale, and notched up 115 appearances through to April 1966. He then retired to concentrate on developing a retail grocery business.
Whelan started out a market stall on Wigan market after working with Haworth Brothers on their stall in Blackburn. He later progressed into a grocers, before visiting America where he studied the self-service supermarket. He returned to England and set about creating a supermarket chain. By the late 1960s the business had 10 stores based across Lancashire. In 1978 Whelan sold the business to Morrisons for £1.5 million.
Whelan acquired a Wigan based fishing and sports store JJ Bradburns in 1971. He continued to use the company name JJB Sports (JJB are the initials of the two previous owners John Jarvis Broughton, followed by J J Bradburn) and continued the retail of sports goods. By 1980, JJB had seven stores, and continued to expand throughout the 80s and 90s, to become the UK's second biggest sports retailer, focused mainly on sports clothing. In 2005, JJB Sports was fined £5.5 million by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) for fixing the price of the English National Team and Manchester United shirts in 2000 and 2001. Which? (the Consumers' Association) issued proceedings against JJB, suing for damages on behalf of consumers affected by the price fixing. Whelan gradually scaled down his interests in the company, and in 2005 stepped down as chairman. However, in October 2006, he personally intervened to overturn the settlement of a pay dispute at JJB's Wigan warehouse negotiated by new chairman Tom Knight, branding it "the equivalent of Communism", prompting a two-day strike. In January 2007 Whelan sold £50m worth of shares in JJB, before selling his remaining 29% stake in June 2007. This action was in breach of an agreement Whelan had with the stock exchange on 26 January 2007, whereby he undertook to make no further disposals for the following 12 months.
In March 2009, Whelan acquired back troubled JJB's nationwide chain of fitness clubs and stores. Wigan Athletic's stadium became the DW Stadium and their new sponsor, DW Sports Fitness, taking the initials of its owner and his new company.
Sources
Net-worth figure: Celebrity Net Worth (October 2026), in USD. Biography and career facts: the person's Wikipedia article and linked reporting. Snapshot date for all StarWorth figures: 28 October 2026.
