Ruling On Latest Fat Mike Court Case – Still Waiting...

I think there needs to be a realistic acceptance that this isn't actually an option or an easy get-out.

Put in the simplest terms: if it is, why haven't we done it?
Why the acceptance that this is not an option, sorry fella I’m struggling with that? I don’t hear nor read any argument that states or demonstrtes that we as a stand-alone business are obliged to partner with an other retailer only to market our products....happy for that part of any judgement or ruling to be shared for the benefit of the clarity. I think we thought we could get out of it by this other means, without the capital outlay of an in-house set up.

That approach hasn’t worked by all accounts....so we need to now take a different approach that sees Fatty with no wriggle room....a business strategy of in-house vs parter can’t be forced upon another business.
 
Why the acceptance that this is not an option, sorry fella I’m struggling with that? I don’t hear nor read any argument that states or demonstrtes that we as a stand-alone business are obliged to partner with an other retailer only to market our products....happy for that part of any judgement or ruling to be shared for the benefit of the clarity. I think we thought we could get out of it by this other means, without the capital outlay of an in-house set up.

That approach hasn’t worked by all accounts....so we need to now take a different approach that sees Fatty with no wriggle room....a business strategy of in-house vs parter can’t be forced upon another business.

Because if it was, we’d have done it before now. It would be a no-brainer if it wasn’t either too expensive to justify or legally an issue.
 
I don’t know about that, he wouldn’t have renegotiated the original deal if that were the case. I think it was just him and the blood sucking predators that ran our club trying to squeeze as much money from us as possible.

Didn't he take £5m from the club to renegotiate ? In what way did that help our cause at that point ? And still he clings on to what amounts to nothing other than a huge inconvenience to the club and possibly more financial losses.
That's a lot of trouble to go to for what is nothing more than money down the back of the sofa to him. His involvement in Rangers will gain him buttons as the SD brand is toxic and the majority will swerve the megastore. He's at it, big time but he always was if you ask me.
 
Didn't he take £5m from the club to renegotiate ? In what way did that help our cause at that point ? And still he clings on to what amounts to nothing other than a huge inconvenience to the club and possibly more financial losses.
That's a lot of trouble to go to for what is nothing more than money down the back of the sofa to him. His involvement in Rangers will gain him buttons as the SD brand is toxic and the majority will swerve the megastore. He's at it, big time but he always was if you ask me.

Yep, a few on here are saying the same and I agree. Nailed to the floor !!
 
Interesting update / commentary on today's Heart and Hand daily update.

Key nugget is that final judgement due at the end of July.
 
Ashley was doubtless a bully long before he was a businessman far less a billionaire. Yet his apparent obsession with RFC, long after it made him, SDI & the tat it sells toxic to millions is curious. Almost perverse.
 
Ashley was doubtless a bully long before he was a businessman far less a billionaire. Yet his apparent obsession with RFC, long after it made him, SDI & the tat it sells toxic to millions is curious. Almost perverse.

Ashley has been a toxic and reviled character for a long time before he ever came near Rangers.

Unfortunately, despite this, his retail model of selling brand merchandise of tat quality at jumble sale prices has been enough to counter it in the modern day where people are far tighter with their cash.

It's all well and good everyone talking about principles and boycotts on moral grounds, but in the real world, walk past his shops and they're still getting plenty folk in the door.

On moral humanitarian principles the general public should already have boycotted anything he touches out of business, without any regard for his involvement with our club.

When a woman is giving birth in the toilets of his warehouse because she's scared of the repercussions of being off work, it should be enough to see everyone with a shred of decency never put a penny in his pockets ever again. Doesn't reflect reality though unfortunately.
 
So the general feeling is that we lost the argument.

Is there a compensation figure we will have to shell out or do we simply carry on under the conditions of the new ruling?
 
I think what you've said is a fair summary of the position, and when this situation first came to light I doubted that a Court would insist on parties being bound to a toxic relationship too.

In principle though, it's the innocent party who decides how to respond to a breach of contract. In Scotland, anyway, the court will grant specific implement in these circumstances unless implement of the contract is impossible.

There is an exception to that - if the implement would result in exceptional hardship to the other party then the Court can exercise its discretion and not grant implement.

Would forcing implementation of the current contract amount to exceptional hardship as meant under the law? I don't know, but I tend to doubt it.

I think similar points can be made re injunctions - the question for the court is really why shouldn't RFC be held to what they contracted to. So far the court seems to have come to the view that there's no good reason, and we're stuck with it.

I'm not sure an exceptional hardship argument has been tried so far - it may be that we go for that if SDI do try to get implements/injunctions based on this latest contract which has been found to exist.

SDI have been arguing that damages are not an appropriate remedy because they are capped under the contract. If the cap doesn't work, then perhaps damages would be an appropriate remedy - but uncapped damages would potentially be a fierce amount given the nature of this contract.
They would then need to divulge how much they have earned from sales of our merchandise (which won't be that much) there's been a boycott for some considerable time, if no one's buying from them they're not 'losing' money, they're just not getting our money.
 
I think what you've said is a fair summary of the position, and when this situation first came to light I doubted that a Court would insist on parties being bound to a toxic relationship too.

In principle though, it's the innocent party who decides how to respond to a breach of contract. In Scotland, anyway, the court will grant specific implement in these circumstances unless implement of the contract is impossible.

There is an exception to that - if the implement would result in exceptional hardship to the other party then the Court can exercise its discretion and not grant implement.

Would forcing implementation of the current contract amount to exceptional hardship as meant under the law? I don't know, but I tend to doubt it.

I think similar points can be made re injunctions - the question for the court is really why shouldn't RFC be held to what they contracted to. So far the court seems to have come to the view that there's no good reason, and we're stuck with it.

I'm not sure an exceptional hardship argument has been tried so far - it may be that we go for that if SDI do try to get implements/injunctions based on this latest contract which has been found to exist.

SDI have been arguing that damages are not an appropriate remedy because they are capped under the contract. If the cap doesn't work, then perhaps damages would be an appropriate remedy - but uncapped damages would potentially be a fierce amount given the nature of this contract.
How can anybody, let alone a judge, hold anybody to a contract but only the bits they want held to?
 
Ok here goes my thick as shyte solution.


Club 1872 set up a retail business. Shares on this business are available to existing members for say £50-£100 per share. Each share comes with... Some club merchandise available when retail deal with club is entered into.

Utilising these funds Club 1872 approach the club and offer x terms using the funds raised by the share issue...whatever terms make it work.

If the deal is agreed and SD match it the club win and we boycott the fu.ck out SD.

Each shareholder gets their money back or the funds are further invested in the club or used to buy from Hummel/Elite and each investor gets their merchandise. Options are available.

This scenario can be repeated every year/contract renewal.


Or am I really fick?
 
Ok here goes my thick as shyte solution.


Club 1872 set up a retail business. Shares on this business are available to existing members for say £50-£100 per share. Each share comes with... Some club merchandise available when retail deal with club is entered into.

Utilising these funds Club 1872 approach the club and offer x terms using the funds raised by the share issue...whatever terms make it work.

If the deal is agreed and SD match it the club win and we boycott the fu.ck out SD.

Each shareholder gets their money back or the funds are further invested in the club or used to buy from Hummel/Elite and each investor gets their merchandise. Options are available.

This scenario can be repeated every year/contract renewal.


Or am I really fick?

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Your forgetting Dave King and Paul Murray signed this new deal and gave fat Ash £3m. Hope Rangers have changed their lawyers that advised them on this


Not only should we be changing them, we should be suing them for giving the duff advice that led to current board members signing the deal in question.
 
Do we actually know that it was Dave King and Paul Murray who signed this deal.

Surely it would be representatives of the Ltd Co board. Would it not be that company which would be entering into the arrangement.
 
Agreed we should block anyone trying to get in to the store and hand out leaflets explaining the reasons . It wouldn’t take long for the message to be driven home .
Absolutely, bizarre to 99% on FF but some are still taken in by main stream media. SoS were superb at leaflets and away at Ayr when there was an opinion from everyone! Their leaflet helped me fully open my eyes
fully. Bizarely there will be an element who don't see the damage visiting the Megastore will do, not putting the link with SD together? Every few weeks there's a thread about the St Enoch shop and people asking where to get kits etc infuriating as it is what you suggest is the best way!
Any picket line scab mentality will drive division...a big nudge in the right way with education should happen
 
Not only should we be changing them, we should be suing them for giving the duff advice that led to current board members signing the deal in question.

We would have got to the exact same place 7 years later if we hadn't. At least now we can sell strips.
 
If this does pan out the way it appears it will, then I think the club are going to have to be pragmatic and look at these judgements as a (very expensive) guide to the contract with SDI.

SDI are using the terms for their benefit, but now we know how it works perhaps the club can too.

From the Oct 2018 judgment the material terms are:

1. The payment by the 3rd party to RFC
2. The share of revenue between RFC and the 3rd party; and
3. The duration

(It’s more complicated than that since these are split between the various types of right, but this is the basic position.)

I think RFC should be inviting offers for deals which front load the arrangement and are of short duration - no more than a year.

By front load I mean a high initial upfront payment by the 3rd party in exchange for the 3rd party getting a high share of the retail proceeds from actual sales.

If Elite (say) offer £5m (or whatever) upfront as their payment in exchange for (say) 90% of the sale proceeds for a year (the figures don’t matter very much for present purposes.)

Either SDI match, in which case they have to pay us the same dosh up front, and we just don’t buy the strips for a year, making sure they make a loss on the deal.

If SDI don’t match, then I’m sure we would show our gratitude to the 3rd party such as Elite for breaking SDI’s hold by giving them bumper sales.

If SDI continue to match year on year on this basis we just keep taking their money without giving them any back by buying strips.

Indeed even if we don’t get any further offers from other 3rd parties, the terms going forward have been amended to this upfront arrangement meaning this arrangement is the default annual roll over deal.

Sooner or later fat boy (or his shareholders) gets fed up, I would imagine. Meantime rather than leaving us with a rolling £1m damages payment to him for every contract, he has a rolling upfront annual payment of (Say) £5m for no benefit.

The position won’t be as simple as that, so it’s an example of what we could try rather than the actual solution, but something along those lines could start turning the contract to our benefit.
This is what will happen, Hummell/Elite needed comfort first.
 
Can't wait for the day I can walk into the Ibrox shop knowing it's ours again

Apologies but haven't read the whole thread but the bit that interests me is whether the shop at Ibrox is stocking our current merchandise or is it still Ashley's tat ???... In fact is it even still open for business after the success of our St Enoch's store. Just wondering ahead of the new season. What a wasted opportunity if its still a SD outlet.
 
Apologies but haven't read the whole thread but the bit that interests me is whether the shop at Ibrox is stocking our current merchandise or is it still Ashley's tat ???... In fact is it even still open for business after the success of our St Enoch's store. Just wondering ahead of the new season. What a wasted opportunity if its still a SD outlet.
Hummel are not supplying sports direct with any of the stock so he is selling tat.

He has the shop for a few more years under a deal made with our old scumbag board so not anything we can do but sit it out.
Fairly common knowledge that,bit worrying that people are still not aware of it to be honest.
 
Hummel are not supplying sports direct with any of the stock so he is selling tat.

He has the shop for a few more years under a deal made with our old scumbag board so not anything we can do but sit it out.
Fairly common knowledge that,bit worrying that people are still not aware of it to be honest.


Probably a matching clause for the club shop too
 
Hummel are not supplying sports direct with any of the stock so he is selling tat.

He has the shop for a few more years under a deal made with our old scumbag board so not anything we can do but sit it out.
Fairly common knowledge that,bit worrying that people are still not aware of it to be honest.

Fair enough that's clear but still a shame that we have two stores in Glasgow City Centre and Belfast yet the premises attached to the stadium is still under SD and not selling up to date merchandise...Had hoped for developments over the close season that may have brought it back into the control of the club. Sometimes situations can develop quickly and out of the blue in business but obviously not in this case. Anyway hopefully sooner rather than later !!!
 
The ruling has been made for a few days now.

The club were very quick to tell us we had a good deal the last time. . . .which wasn't entirely the truth.

The silence since the latest development has been deafening.

Put the record straight and let the fans know the situation.

This judgement was an "add on" to the bigger case the result of which won't be known until July. We'll know better where we stand then.
 
Nor should he. We already handed the fat cancerous bastard £3m to get out of a previous deal signed by the shysters already in his pocket. We fight this cretin all the way.
We didn't really get out of it though did we? With this matching clause anyway that seems indefinite.

The board have done a lot of good things but they messed this up 100%.
 
Absolutely, bizarre to 99% on FF but some are still taken in by main stream media. SoS were superb at leaflets and away at Ayr when there was an opinion from everyone! Their leaflet helped me fully open my eyes
fully. Bizarely there will be an element who don't see the damage visiting the Megastore will do, not putting the link with SD together? Every few weeks there's a thread about the St Enoch shop and people asking where to get kits etc infuriating as it is what you suggest is the best way!
Any picket line scab mentality will drive division...a big nudge in the right way with education should happen
At this moment and time I don’t think boycotting the megastore will have much effect as they don’t have any stock the fans are interested in. It is mostly outdated tops and small trinkets. But agree we should do it for the publicity etc and show fat Ash that we will not go away
 
A worse place as we’d have had 7 years of less revenue share from the kits sold - if anyone was buying them. We were boycotting merchandise when that deal was in place.

Exactly, we have done well to get to where we are. People moaning that we have fucked up, don't know what more they expected us to do.
 
We didn't really get out of it though did we? With this matching clause anyway that seems indefinite.

The board have done a lot of good things but they messed this up 100%.

How can you claim that when the matching clauses already existed at the end of the 7 year deal.
 
We paid him £3m which we weren't told about at the time. We will be due money after this case and he is still here.

OK then, I guess you would have preferred to sit out the 7 year deal, sell no merch all that time and be having these court cases in 2024 instead of 2019.

Glad your not in charge.
 
I think we need to do the same as the beggars have done get some MPs onside and get it brought up at goverment meetings about his tactics and dealings with us in particular hindering our business.
 
We paid him £3m which we weren't told about at the time. We will be due money after this case and he is still here.

We're currently selling merchandise via other retailers and getting a far better share of the profits than we ever did under the 7 year deal.

The board evidently felt that £3m outlay was balanced against what we'd get in when supporters started buying kit again on new terms.

It also allowed us to go to market with other parties far sooner than we would have if we were stuck in the 7 year deal.

MA is still there, we have a contract with him, but he is getting no stock to sell and is getting no money for sales from it as things stand. He's an annoyance, it may take time and a bit of money ultimately to really shake him off, but it was never going to be a quick or easy solution.
 
And if we have to pay significant compensation to the fat man after this ruling?

The likelihood is that we'll have to pay the capped damages of £1m if anything, but there's slight potential the courts could tell us we need to pay more if the cap is deemed insufficient to cover the level of losses SDI are deemed to have suffered.

Either way, again, it is simply a price that may need to be paid in order to regain a normalised ability to commercialise the business like other clubs can.

The current board didn't create this mess, they are trying to work around it.
 
The likelihood is that we'll have to pay the capped damages of £1m if anything, but there's slight potential the courts could tell us we need to pay more if the cap is deemed insufficient to cover the level of losses SDI are deemed to have suffered.

Either way, again, it is simply a price that may need to be paid in order to regain a normalised ability to commercialise the business like other clubs can.

The current board didn't create this mess, they are trying to work around it.
I know they didn't create the mess but they've made lots of mistakes in trying to correct. While also not being truthful with the fans on occasion regarding it.

Even if the damages are capped at £1m, which is not worst case scenario, then that means we've given SDI £4m + paying a significant wedge on legal fees too. No question we are still significantly in the red on this and SDI still have indefinite matching clause atm.
 
I know they didn't create the mess but they've made lots of mistakes in trying to correct. While also not being truthful with the fans on occasion regarding it.

Even if the damages are capped at £1m, which is not worst case scenario, then that means we've given SDI £4m + paying a significant wedge on legal fees too. No question we are still significantly in the red on this and SDI still have indefinite matching clause atm.

You say they've made mistakes. What are they and what are the alternatives you think would have provided a better outcome?

Where have they not been truthful?
 
You say they've made mistakes. What are they and what are the alternatives you think would have provided a better outcome?

Where have they not been truthful?
Seems that they've not understood or realised the gravity of the matching clause in the new contract. If we have to pay significant £1m+ damages to SDI due to the Elite deal stuff then they've also made a mistake in proceeding with that at least for now.

They made a huge song and dance after the deal was changed making out that we are totally free from him (or near enough minus the megastore etc.) which wasn't true. Then they definitely didn't mention that we paid £3m at the time.
 
Seems that they've not understood or realised the gravity of the matching clause in the new contract. If we have to pay significant £1m+ damages to SDI due to the Elite deal stuff then they've also made a mistake in proceeding with that at least for now.

I think they've understood it, they've just sought to challenge it in legal terms to be able to work around it. The matching clause was not put there by the current board. It was in the old deal and they've simply not been able to get the new deal (which got us making revenue from kit sales immediately at a normalised share, then also got us a much earlier opportunity to go to market with other vendors and sell kit circumventing any revenue going to MA) without retaining it.

The current legal challenges are not about not understanding things in reality. They're about a legal game of chess around definitions as a means of gradually extracting ourselves from SDI.

If we have to pay damages for entering into the Elite deal, then that'll have been a calculated risk deemed acceptable as another means of working ourselves out of his grasp.

Again though, you should feel free to point out the alternative options and approaches you know better for getting us out of the position we were in when King and co took over.

They made a huge song and dance after the deal was changed making out that we are totally free from him (or near enough minus the megastore etc.) which wasn't true. Then they definitely didn't mention that we paid £3m at the time.

The club's position from their legal advice was that we were free of him. They couldn't have said otherwise and then been in a position to fight this court battle when he came on the hunt.

The exact commercial details of any agreement need not be disclosed to the public, indeed they may not be legally allowed to divulge those details from the contract.

This sounds more like supporter entitlement without understanding of the implications of thinking we should have visibility of all of the legal and commercially sensitive details under which the business' contracts with partners are set up. Frankly, it's cloud-cuckoo land.
 
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We're currently selling merchandise via other retailers and getting a far better share of the profits than we ever did under the 7 year deal.

The board evidently felt that £3m outlay was balanced against what we'd get in when supporters started buying kit again on new terms.

It also allowed us to go to market with other parties far sooner than we would have if we were stuck in the 7 year deal.

MA is still there, we have a contract with him, but he is getting no stock to sell and is getting no money for sales from it as things stand. He's an annoyance, it may take time and a bit of money ultimately to really shake him off, but it was never going to be a quick or easy solution.
Spot on
 
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