EFL themselves have confirmed that the video is real. Unfortunately, I've not been able to find the video to watch it myself.
I suggested as much within an hour of the news coming out: the owners have consciously pulled this move because of gambling:
Could be they offered very long odds (in their capacity as bookies) on survival when we were stuck in a rut, and now we've crawled back and we're looking good to survive, they've realised how much that would cost them and decided to shaft the club to prevent that from happening.
Could be that Choi and his mates themselves bet against our survival, and stand to lose a fortune if we stay up... So again, they deliberately tank the club to ensure they 'win'.
The amounts of money involved back this up. Losing £20 million on Latics is chicken feed compared to what's won and lost in gambling, especially in the Far East where gambling is worth billions.
If this is the case and can be proven, then surely they should be banged up. It's illegal to bet on anything where you have direct control / input into the outcome... It's the reason players aren't allowed to bet, and especially on games they're playing in. I don't see how that law could be any different anywhere, since betting on something where you can directly influence the outcome is by definition not actually betting. It's more like fraud.
The fact is that there's something extremely fishy. The club is worth virtually nothing now. If they'd have put in a handful of million to get us to the end of the season, the way things were going we'd have been a mid table Championship club, which would have been worth a lot more than what they'd have had to put in to keep it going until the end of the season. They could then have sold it, maybe even at a small profit. There's literally no legitimate business case for the direction they've taken.
We also fall into a very difficult category for the purposes of finding a buyer. Too small for the big time players who want to buy titles, but too big for the 'local boy done good' type of businessman (Mr Whelan being an honourable exception). Only really Ainscoughs could afford it, but I'm not aware that they have any interest in football.
Within an hour of the news breaking, I thought of the possibility of getting a fans' group together, but when I did some basic numbers, it's not feasible because we're still too big for that. Being (probably very) generous and assuming that we could get 500 people willing to invest, they'd have to each put in an average of £20k to get the £10m the administrator needs to see proof of. There are probably 500 people in Wigan who could afford that and they'd probably be willing if it wasn't for the fact that they'd then have to be paying a further £300 each every month for the foreseeable future just to maintain current operations. Investing £20k in something that is then a £300 per month millstone for the foreseeable future is very different to investing £20k in something where there's a return. It's simply not going to happen. Unless someone comes in who can afford to prop the club up themselves, with enough funds to maintain support for some time until restructuring can be properly done, we're goners. And there's nothing we can do about it.
Would be great to sue Choi, but those proceedings would take far longer than the club has got. Lock me in a room with him for a few minutes and I reckon I'd make him change his mind... But he's the invisible man; I wouldn't even know what he looked like.
Let's hope Mr Whelan sees some opportunity here. I'm not holding up any hope for anyone else, unless it's a crazy billionaire with a sense of humour... One that occurred to me (it's A VERY long shot) would be Red Bull. They have form for buying struggling football clubs (not in particularly 'fashionable' locations as well) and turning them around. Leipzig is probably the best known of them, but they own clubs in several countries. Since theoretically we're one good season away from the Premier League and wouldn't cost them much in terms of initial investment, we may represent a good marketing opportunity for Red Bull. Being part of a corporate marketing strategy isn't the perfect ownership, but it's definitely better than going under.
