Rangers take on SPFL over 8 million sponsorship deal

I guess the likes of Cinch and Cazoo are posing a serious threat for the used car dealerships and Douglas Park has more than earned the right to push back against it if he feels it's the right thing to do.
We should be on a constant war footing with the current Spfl executive anyway, this is just another skirmish!
 
SPFL chief executive Neil Doncaster is under growing pressure to solve Rangers’ sponsor snub.

As Sunsport revealed yesterday Gers refused to wear the logo of commercial partners cinch in their Premiership opener with Livingston.

And the Ibrox side failed to declare a cinch-sponsored man of the match, while the car company’s branding was absent from broadcast interview boards.

And the fallout from those shock actions could spark a bitter new war over Doncaster’s role within the Scottish game.

Cinch have agreed an £8million deal with the SPFL due to run over the next five years and have their rights protected in their regulations.

But Rangers — whose chairman Douglas Park made his fortune in car sales — have blatantly ignored rule G46, which covers logos on shirts.

That rule says that all players should carry the logo of the title sponsors on at least one sleeve.

Gers, whose managing director Stewart Robertson is a member of the SPFL board, claim their lawyers are satisfied they can legitimately refuse to advertise cinch, even though a central deal has been struck on behalf of all 42 clubs.

The online car firm and the SPFL have remained tight-lipped as they plan their next course of action but are understood to be furious at the league champions taking such a commercially aggressive approach.

The league body could hand down sanctions in a bid to force cinch’s name on to the strips and hoardings.

But the Ibrox side are likely to refuse to back down and now Doncaster must react.

I take it that if the SPFL sorts out a deal and gets money for it, as before, all clubs are obliged to follow that deal.

It looks that for some reason we object to this deal, and you wonder that if we do, why has nothing been done in advance to stop us doing what we did on Saturday.

That its essentially a trash-deal is beyond doubt, but you don`t - as a single member club - "suddenly" boycott it. Of course, we might have contacted the SPFL before and they chose to ignore us. As it is, we forced the issue and I assume that we will be fined for breach of rulings or whatever ... no matter what we on here think about the worth of the deal. Just saying.
 
I take it that if the SPFL sorts out a deal and gets money for it, as before, all clubs are obliged to follow that deal.

It looks that for some reason we object to this deal, and you wonder that if we do, why has nothing been done in advance to stop us doing what we did on Saturday.

That its essentially a trash-deal is beyond doubt, but you don`t - as a single member club - "suddenly" boycott it. Of course, we might have contacted the SPFL before and they chose to ignore us. As it is, we forced the issue and I assume that we will be fined for breach of rulings or whatever ... no matter what we on here think about the worth of the deal. Just saying.
We’ll all soon find out. It looks like this is why Robertson came out with his commercial critique earlier in the week.
 
Yes, thanks, I get that.

It is the strategy that concerns me though. We’ve unilaterally decided not to implement an SPL sponsorship deal.

I’m guessing because the advice must be that implementation equals tacit acceptance.

I think that might backfire, don’t you?

In what way will it backfire? If we’ve forced to wear the badge then so be it.

But we’ve every right to question the work of the 400k-a-year Doncaster.

It’s a chip-chip process with an eye on future agreements.

Do the Cup sponsors appear as prominently on our shirts?
 
Agree with all those aiming at the SPFL and Doncaster. Imagine Tomket are paying 10 or 20 times that amount... Quite feasible. They'd be questioning why they bother going through us and just go get a cut rate off these mugs at the SPFL.
 
In what way will it backfire? If we’ve forced to wear the badge then so be it.

But we’ve every right to question the work of the 400k-a-year Doncaster.

It’s a chip-chip process with an eye on future agreements.

Do the Cup sponsors appear as prominently on our shirts?

I fully agree that we question, question and question again.

I also know that to a layman like me the law frequently seems counter-intuitive, particularly corporate law.

As things stand, I'd say we're in breach of contract whilst the other 11 (I assume) have met the requirements.

I'm not convinced that plays well in front of a judge who will probably look to see what measures we have taken to remedy the situation and will probably prefer co-operation rather than agitation. We may have evidence of a failed dialogue.

However, if the only risk (excluding another courtroom humiliation) is we have to display Cinch then I am in full support of it.
 
this is interesting - I wonder how much tomket are paying for equivalent advertising on the other sleeve.
There’s a difference between sponsoring the sleeve of 1 club and sponsoring the entire league, can’t really compare the two
 
Some of these deals are so low that you’d think it was deliberate but that doesn’t really make sense. As with everything over the past decade It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if all this sort of stuff somehow went more towards supplementing celtc in one way or another. All clubs getting pretty much nothing directly via the sponsorship but the connections used to wine and dine people who then sponsor celtc. Everything has been funnelled towards them in one way or another.
 
G46 If so determined by the Board, the shirts of all Players in League Matches and Play- Off Matches shall carry the League logo and/or, the name/logo(s) of the title or other sponsor of the League, on one or both sleeves, as specified from time to time by the Board.


I wonder if we could get round it by displaying the logo on a patch about the size of a 5p piece?
 
This seems to be the likely reasoning. If the SPFL have given the green light to current sponsor logos in current positions, leading to us selling space and are now trying to force us into something different for potentially far less cash, we have every right to fight it.
This would make a bit of sense.

I think it's more likely that cinch are getting a level of advertising from Rangers that we charge far more to club sponsors for. The club cannot justify that to these companies.
 
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This could mean nothing but the cinch branding has been badly edited out of the transitions within the highlights on SPFL’s YouTube.
 
Think a lot depends on what discussions have taken place previously. Theoretically the SPFL could sell your entire shirt sponsorship for a penny. Who would accept that unless they agreed to it in advance? Reality is Rangers and the scvm could probably do better deals than the SPFL and when the advertising is almost entirely based on hundreds of matches of us and them we would be mad not to fight this. I’m going to hazard a guess Mr Park will be paying our legal fees given his own business interests so I don’ t think it’s one to worry about from that perspective.

If we can demonstrate we get more for equivalent advertising we could call into question the competency of the spfl board. Yet again.
 
Situations like this worry me now as the clubs legal advice has been particularly terrible in recent years.

I would hope this is based on something contractual and nothing to do with Park's business, if it is it calls into question his judgement and is a case we will have lost already.
 
My only worry with things like this is that the SPFL ultimately play the “Bringing the game into disrepute” card and then hammer us be it financially or point deduction (admittedly, I haven’t read up on whether they can do that).
 
My only worry with things like this is that the SPFL ultimately play the “Bringing the game into disrepute” card and then hammer us be it financially or point deduction (admittedly, I haven’t read up on whether they can do that).
Your worry is they make the rules up against us as they go along so some concerns here but someone needs to stand up for Scottish football
 
Surely the clubs would’ve agreed to the Cinch deal? Doncaster always says he works on behalf of the clubs so surely we’d need to ok these kind of things.
This guy is not fit for purpose but unfortunately the only way we’d get rid of him is if the scum wanted it.
 
I don't trust our lawyers to get it right at all. So often with the Ashley disputes was the legal advice given terrible.
 
It’s all a bit of a sideshow, but it would be helpful to the support, who after all fund Rangers, if we were told what the issue is.

Dare I say, it might even be the type of a thing a large fans group with a significant shareholding might find it worthwhile enquiring.
 
My only worry with things like this is that the SPFL ultimately play the “Bringing the game into disrepute” card and then hammer us be it financially or point deduction (admittedly, I haven’t read up on whether they can do that).
They can't dock us points for it no way.
 
for those saying the Ladbrokes sponsorship was less than Cinch, according to this bbc article, the Ladbrokes deal was £2m per year I believe Cinch works out as £1.6m per year



also, this deal was secured in 2015 just as the 3 Bears secured their take over of the club. I wonder if SPFL sponsorship was a priority given what was going on at the time with our club?
 
I know people are pointing out the badge I do think we will eventually wear it but it's probably lot more to do with

Spfl selling rights to man of the match, other stadium advertising at televised games which in not so sure they should have done a that's always been club choice I believe.

They're is more to it but I do think n is too chip away at Doncaster we want him gone
 
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