Rangers’ arrogance is staggering. In the week in which a stream of people inside Ibrox publicly denounced the SPFL for signing a £30m-a-year broadcasting contract with Sky Television something else happened concerning the club.
They were fined £225,000 for illegally colluding with two other companies, Elite Sports and JD Sports, to fix the price of Rangers’ replica kit at a level that made them more expensive for their own supporters than they ought to have been. The ultimate betrayal.
When the fans could have made a saving, the club decided to make a killing at their expense. They took money out of the pockets of the people who had stood by them during what was termed the ‘Journey’ through the lower leagues back to the Premiership following administration and liquidation. Unless I’ve missed something, there has been no statement from the club on this matter. And certainly no sign of an apology after the imposition of the fine by the Competition and Markets Authority. Instead, the club announced the launch of a new fourth kit in the midst of a cost of living crisis. You couldn’t make it up.
Meanwhile, as Rangers were being forced to take money out of the bank to pay the cost of collusion, the SPFL were announcing the payment of record annual fees to clubs, including Rangers, totalling almost £30m. A figure up five per cent on the previous year.
The SPFL also declared a record turnover of £39.5m – up seven per cent from the previous season. However, if you open any door inside Ibrox you’ll find somebody to tell you SPFL chief executive Neil Doncaster is guilty of underselling Scottish football, alleging there has been no proper investigation of the market for more lucrative coverage of the Premiership.
Only one television company has ever outbid Sky for the right to screen live football. They were called Setanta and they went bust mid-contract, causing fear and alarm to spread throughout the game. The new deal done by the SPFL may have its imperfections but it also has the look of the best agreement it was possible to reach at this time.
And does anyone really believe Doncaster made it up when he said the market had been vigorously scrutinised before the contract was signed with Sky? It’s only two weeks since a former Rangers manager, Graeme Souness, told everyone no blue chip company would touch Scottish football ever again after Celtic fans disrupted the minute’s applause to mark the Queen’s death before their team’s game against St Mirren.
Sky, however, turned down the volume on the protesters, made their customary apology for any offence caused and got on with it. And now they’ve entered into a five-year deal while giving a sense of security to clubs at a time of financial crisis within the country as a whole.
SPFL president Murdoch MacLennan described the gathering gloom on the financial front as “strengthening economic headwinds”. MacLennan has, incidentally, been wrongly implicated in Rangers’ spot of bother over price fixing. He does have a role within the Competition and Markets Authority but it was only undertaken after judgment had been passed on the club. There goes another conspiracy theory.
But the clearly visible disconnect between Rangers and the SPFL goes on. And the only way it will ever come to an end is in the event of regime change, whether that is inside Ibrox or Hampden. Doncaster and MacLennan are perceived to be anti-Rangers.
The discord, particularly where Doncaster is concerned is, to my way of thinking, highly personal. And it was exacerbated when the SPFL called the league early at the onset of the Covid pandemic and made Celtic champions for a ninth time in a row. Years earlier, Doncaster had relocated his family because Police Scotland had advised him their safety was endangered in this country.
I’ll repeat that. The man was advised that the safety of his wife and young children could not be guaranteed if they remained with him in Scotland. Which part of that is not profoundly embarrassing? If I were in Doncaster’s shoes I’d take the contract with Sky and the latest set of record-breaking financial returns and see them as a high water mark in my time here.
Then I’d negotiate the terms of my release from the SPFL and go back home to reflect on a job well done. And with my head held high. Stability has been afforded to 42 clubs for the next five years. Forty-one of them are grateful for that. The other one will accept the benefits anyway.
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