Rangers face a constant uphill battle when it comes to fighting against European opposition on and off the park.
When teams in the Premier League that are relegated get more TV money than the Ibrox outfit’s record total revenue, it paints a sorry picture.
The SPFL has announced a new TV deal with Premier Sport and a sponsorship agreement with William Hill which will see more money than ever coming into the Scottish game.
Finance expert fumes as Rangers fans count cost of SPFL deals
Scotland is still some way behind other countries with years of neglect in terms of marketing and promotion.
That some years saw cup competitions and the league without a title sponsor should have seen the board ripped up and rebuilt, however, the same faces remain in situ.
Even after they cost clubs money and had to apologise to Rangers, they kept their jobs.
The game is unique in this part of the world, and it should be sold as such.
The new revenue is great; however, fans have been hit again and will have to fork out for another subscription service to watch their team.
A point that football finance expert Adam Williams, speaking to Rangers News, has every sympathy for those already forking out hundreds of pounds every year:
“I can understand supporters’ frustration at having to fork out an extra tenner a month to guarantee watching as many televised games as possible.
“Cost of living crisis or not, £96 per month is scandalous.
“Even before the Premier Sports subscription fee, you’re looking at over a grand per year.
“You could get two Rangers season tickets for that with change for a couple of pints each game left over.
“You’re potentially alienating a generation of supporters or pushing them down the dodgy firestick route, which is myopic to say the least.
“The SPFL have already put significant resources into their anti-piracy campaigns, but they ought to invest as much time into preventing supporters from becoming disenfranchised in the long term.”
Williams wasn’t entirely critical of the recently announced deals though and praised the small print of what has been agreed:
“From a raw financial point of view, I think you have to give credit to Doncaster and the SPFL, who have secured a TV deal which, in terms of income per game, is the eighth-most lucrative in Europe.
“There are ethical concerns with the William Hill deal, and no amount of window dressing with the attached gambling harm awareness programme can disguise that.
“But in isolation, £2m per season is pretty impressive. It might seem inconsequential in the scope of Rangers’ commercial income of circa £30m per season, but the ocean is made of drops.
“You just hope they handle it better than the Cinch deal. That was a woeful saga.”
Scottish football has to move forward when deals expire
Williams is right.
Look at the approach that James Bisgrove took to building the club’s revenue in his time at Rangers.
Loads of deals of smaller amounts rather than one or two bigger ones.
Every little helps and all that.
However, the TV deals with Sky and Premier Sport run for five years and so does the SPFL title sponsorship with William Hill.
The football landscape could be very different by then.
Amazon and Apple are getting more involved in football and other countries in Europe already have innovative agreements where clubs can show all their games.
Streaming companies will play a huge part in the modernisation of football media and the way that the sport is watched.
If Scotland is to move forward, the people at the top of of the game must think outside the box and interrogate every possible avenue.
The fans can’t keep paying for the faults of those running the game.
