Simon Jordan crunched the numbers and insists Rangers still landed a bumper windfall following Champions League qualification despite Giovanni van Bronckhorst stressing that it wasn’t the mega-money figures that had been reported.
The Ibrox club are due to release their financial results imminently ahead of the announcement of a date for the AGM which will give shareholders the chance to grill the board on Rangers becoming the worst side in Champions League history, as well as surrendering the title to Celtic.
Van Bronckhorst reiterated what managing director Stewart Robertson said earlier this season – “some think the money has fallen out of the sky… the £40million figure is wrong” when the heat was on over Euro displays and some fans questioning what they felt was a lack of investment in the team. But the £40m figure that was bandied about in the summer was always a red herring.
Calvin Bassey was sold to Ajax for a club record fee in the in region of £20m while Southampton paid an initial £6m for Joe Aribo. Former Crystal Palace owner Simon Jordan got his calculator out on talkSPORT to go over the numbers and still believes around 25 per cent of the club’s annual turnover was brought in, something for which wouldn’t have been budgeted.
And he insists it would have been hugely more lucrative than reaching the Europa League Final last season and would have been worth even more if Rangers hadn’t finished pointless from Group A along with Napoli, Liverpool and Ajax.
Jordan said: “If you generate £12million from going all the way to a Europa League final and then look at the overall situation with the Champions League. You get £15.65m for just getting into the group stage, you get distributions based on on your contribution to the co-efficient over the last 10 years. Rangers would have been slightly disadvantaged because they weren’t in Europe for a period of time because of the situation with their football club.
“But they got to the Europa League final last year and finished 31st out of the 32 teams and got another £2.5m so that’s up to £18m. Then there’s a distribution deal for TV rights which is about another £1m to £1.5m. You’re at the best part of £20m. Then you have a major sponsor in 32Red on your shirt who probably had a clause in their sponsorship agreement that triggers when you qualify for the Champions League because their brand will be emblazoned across a variety of difference places around Europe.
“Then you’ve got the ability to sell tickets for Champions League games which were about £50-£60 a pop. I think on average it was about £160 for three game packages so you have £8m or £9m in gate receipts so all of a sudden you have in and around about £30m coming into the football club that you would never have budgeted for because of the Champions League and all its component parts.”
When co-host Jim White asked Jordan why his figures didn’t tally with what he’d been given, Jordan said: “They’ve given you figures that suits the argument they want to advance. There probably isn’t a clear straight line to £40m benefits and I guarantee there would have been bonuses for the players that got them there.
“There will be that netting of the contributions but there was a windfall - it might not be £40m - but there certainly was a £15m-£20m windfall. And don’t forget Rangers had to get all the way to a final in Europe to get those £12.5m figures - they only had to turn up to the Champions League and do nothing by getting into it. I get the point they’re making ‘Please don’t us tell what we got because it isn’t as great as you think it is’ but you did sell £29m worth of players and bring in £15m. I’m saying in-between the two is the reality of the situation.
“The difference will be £10m-plus in getting to a Europa League final and getting into the Champions League. And it would have been reasonable to expect to draw a game or two and get 1 million euros for every game you draw and 2.5 million euros for a win so the fact they didn’t compete in it didn’t help their cause. But the overarching fact is that there was a significant windfall. Given the fact their turnover is £50m-£60m then if they got £15m increase then that’s a 25 per cent increase. I’m not suggesting as a former owner of a football club how to spend that money but you can’t have it both ways. You can’t say there’s no material increase when clearly if you bring the figures into a more forensic view there is.”
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