Some very interesting news was recently announced on the quiet by the SPFL / SFA as they declared the multi-year battle over the league sponsorship had been “brought to a close.” Now I tend to trust the governing bodies so much, that if they told me the sky was up I would take a look outside to double check. In this case however it does appear to be legitimate as Rangers released a statement shortly afterwards confirming the same. This whole saga does raise various questions though, mainly what exactly should have happened, why didn’t it happen that way and how the hell did we end up in a position where Rangers was given leave to take one governing body to court, by the other governing body?
So first things first lets take a look at the overall situation. After various issues finding sponsors for both cup competitions and the league itself the SPFL finally identified used care sellers, Cinch, as able to provide a suitable package to sponsor the entire league setup. This would normally be seen as good news but even at this stage there were a few issues. Chief among them was the rumours that rather than earning his magnificent salary and bonus we had shelled out money to a consultancy firm to find the sponsors for us. It beggars belief that despite being on a salary most can only dream of, Neil Doncaster outsourced this function at considerable cost. Not exactly a great use of very limited resources but that said if that had been the only problem then it would have been a much better situation than the one we ended up in!
So now someone found us a new deal the normal thing to do would be to check with the clubs they were happy, there were no blockers to them fulfilling their obligations under the new offer and then sign the contract. Pretty simple right? Apparently not as the SPFL fulfilled their obligations, spoke to their member clubs but then promptly ignored Rangers advising them of a conflict and signed the deal anyway.
SPFL Rule relating to commercial contracts.
Up to now we’ve got a contract being offered by Cinch, Rangers advising they had a conflicting contract with Parks Motor Group and the SPFL barrelling ahead and signing on with Cinch anyway. Queue widespread hysteria from the usual media quarters and pet Celtic pundits when Rangers then refused to show the Cinch advertising.
Michael Stewart (ex Celtic TV pundit) blaming Rangers without even bothering to try and understand the situation.
You would think at this point, again, it was fairly simple. The SPFL have a set of rules, Rangers followed these rules to the letter and yet somehow people were lining up to share doom mongering stories about how Rangers was going to ruin the Scottish game, we were going to drive sponsors away in droves as we wouldn’t adhere to contracts etc etc. If these people took just a little time to consider the facts instead of assuming “Rangers bad” then they may have placed the blame where it lies, with the SPFL but instead, as usual, the blame was laid at the feet of our club.
Now we’ve got the battle lines drawn it would be easy to think that everything should be sorted out fairly quickly and once finished we could move on and focus on the teams on the field. Not in Scotland you won’t! Instead this saga became more and more drawn out with all sorts of idiotic claims being thrown in.
First the SPFL actually went to court as Douglas Park wanted his company and pre-existing sponsor for Rangers, Parks Motor Group, to be involved in any discussions as an interested party. Whilst this would be normal and make sense to most the SPFL put time and money into trying to exclude them from any talks. We aren’t really given any reason why but this ridiculous idea is duly dismissed with the courts agreeing with Rangers and Parks. Time for the SPFL to admit they were wrong? In a move surprising nobody they didn’t and instead doubled down on the sponsorship side of things with SPL chairman, McLennan, writing to all member clubs portraying Rangers as the problem. Here was the words of wisdom from the SPFL chief:
“Dear all. You will all be aware that earlier this summer, the SPFL signed a title sponsorship contract with cinch.
“This contract is, by value, the biggest single sponsorship deal in the 131-year history of the league.
“In the context of what is, by any measure, a challenging economic environment, our Chief Executive and his commercial team deserve huge credit for delivering this deal.
“It is therefore very disappointing that one of our clubs has not felt able to deliver inventory to cinch.
“Your Board will be discussing this situation later this week. I will of course be in touch thereafter to give you a further update.”
The SPFL insist there is a clear breach in “the fulfilment of rights obligations.”
There’s big bad Rangers causing the problems again…
As time went on Parks produced pre-existing contracts signed between themselves and Rangers and they continued to refuse to display Cinch branding. The SPFL clearly realised the gig was up and Rangers weren’t going to be bullied into submission by piling pressure on us. They decided to follow a new route and rather than trying to force Rangers to go against their own rules they appealed to Cinch directly to re-write the terms of the agreement they had signed. Luckily for the SPFL the Cinch folks played nice and agreed to the re-write, preventing a more serious issue for Doncaster and Co, however just because they were wrong didn’t mean they would admit as much.
Instead under a cloud of silence they carried on with business as normal. Rangers, fed up of being portrayed as the bad guys decided this wasn’t good enough. They disrupted the Sky TV deal signing process as part of a wider protest of corporate governance in the SPFL. This was eventually bypassed but Rangers had drawn the line in the sand and declared they would continue to raise the issue until we got an apology and have some of our legal fees paid. More recently the SPL recognised we had a case and actually gave us leave to take the SPFL to court in an unprecedented move. This clearly made the SPFL sit up and take notice and just a short while later we received an apology (sort of at least!) and some money towards our legal fees for this matter.
The apology wasn’t great, it was very clearly worded in such a way as if to say I’m apologising because I’m being made to, not because I mean it. Equally the legal fees were partially covered, rather than fully, however it was enough for the club to declare themselves content. In an added swipe at those who claim Admin 2564 is round the corner we announced we would be donating the legal fees received to charity. This was a great way for the club to show they were arguing on principle, rather than needing financial redress.
The other big bit of news is possibly more significant and actually took me back a few years as well. In light of the governance errors over this process the SPFL are going to commission an independent review of the SPFL governance processes. Can everyone remember the dossier from Rangers? At the time the motion for an independent review was scuppered by media and rival clubs bigging it up to be a massive smoking gun. I genuinely think people were expecting images of Doncaster making love to animals or something! Rangers never once claimed to have anything like that, instead saying they had numerous examples where the governance mechanisms in the SPFL were ignored or failed. Unfortunately by the time we presented it the hype had been built and rather than engaging to fix these issues people laughed as the evidence was minute.
Now as we close the curtain on another example of failure in governance that has cost all sides large amounts of time and money it’s been acknowledged maybe we did have a point. Now those clubs who also think the SPFL are failing the clubs, but sneered as it was Rangers making the case need to think this could have been dealt with years ago. Given it’s going to SPFL commissioned I have my doubts, add to this we’ve already had one review come and go with some great thoughts but very little action out of it, I suspect it may be a false light at the end of the tunnel. Perhaps this time though the clubs can actually try and help the game in Scotland, rather than just voting motions down because of who raised them. I wont hold my breathe though!
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