Today’s reform proposals by the Scottish Football League (SFL) got me thinking about the current state of the game in Alba.
So let’s say that we all agree that Rangers did a terrible wrong (most people probably agree with this, but Rangers fans may demur). The “punishment” was relegation to Division Three of the SFL. How is the offender getting along? Judged by attendances, quite splendidly. Sitting atop the division, average attendance is up by 2.7% this season.
Rangers’ fellow bottom-feeders are also enjoying the company of their infamous rival. Last season average attendance per game in the division was 500, and this season they look set to treble that. Not all the teams have hosted Rangers yet, but when they have it has been a sellout- a pity that some clubs only have a capacity of 2000! Financially this is a remarkable windfall gain.
But what about the Scottish Premier League (SPL) clubs that cast Rangers into the outer darkness? Taking the ten teams who were in the SPL last season and projecting forward their attendances from current levels, there will be a 10% decline this year. Celtic, by far the biggest club with attendance 4-5 times the average of the remainder, is down 10%. Some clubs, such as top of the table Hibernian, are up this year, and the situation may change by the end of the season.
But on current evidence, the victims of the punishment appear mostly to be the punishers themselves. I have no data, but I would suspect that ticket prices are down, and it is also said that Sky reduced the value it paid for SPL rights because of Rangers’ demotion.
Does that mean the clubs were wrong to punish Rangers in this way? If the intention was to make Rangers fans suffer, then quite possibly. It may be that Rangers fans feel humiliated playing in Division Three, but it’s equally possible they’re enjoying the change. If it was to cripple Rangers financially, then I also think it may backfire. They can feasibly win promotion back to the SPL over three seasons with a far less expensive team than they would have needed had they remained in the SPL, while selling more tickets. True, they are missing out on SPL broadcast income and European football, but wages are the biggest problem for most clubs, and they must feel quite comfortable financially. When (if?) they return in four years, they could be sitting on a war-chest that will buy them another era of dominance.
Of course, it’s fine to say that the punishment of wrong-doing is morally necessary, I am just wondering if there are not smarter ways to punish. For example, awarding a percentage of the gate to visitors while keeping them in the SPL would have maintained interest in the SPL while punishing the club financially. I’m sure there are many variants on this theme that could have been made to work. As several critics pointed in the summer, the danger is that the punishment of Rangers may end up driving some innocent SPL clubs into insolvency, and that does seem like a perverse kind of justice.
It’s an intriguing point, but I think the SPL clubs were forced into it by their fans. The starting position of the SPL clubs was that regardless of how much Rangers had been cheating them, the consequences of punishment would be too dire to contemplate.
By contrast, their fans who had seen their clubs reduced to cannon fodder, rather tired of starting each season with success being finishing 3rd, took a different view; they were clearly aware of Rangers’ greater resources, but to discover that a crucial dimension of their status was as a result of Rangers playing by different rules was a last straw.
Those fans made it clear to their clubs that they could not expect them to continue coming if they failed to punish Rangers. The clubs didn’t believe them, and tried to elide this, but the point was pressed to the point that it started to sink in that this wasn’t a case of happiness vs unhappiness but the clubs choosing which form of unhappiness to live with.
The summer produced a clash of world views – between those who saw this as a financial problem, and those who saw it as a moral or political one. That the latter won out – unusually it must be said – is part of the reason why people like Stuart Cosgrove writes this piece: (http://scottishfootballmonitor.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/why-the-beast-of-armageddon-failed-to-show/) or Gerry Hassan calls it ‘the Scottish Spring’ (http://www.gerryhassan.com/uncategorized/2439/#more-2439)
A poor article. Getting facts straight I would imagine would be quite key in this. Firstly, no one was ‘punished’. Rangers went bust & were liquidated so I’m a little confused as to how you can ‘relegate’. Something that doesn’t exist?
As with all clubs, the rules are if you go bust you lose your place in the whole structure. All new clubs must apply to join the league. Sevco who bought the remaining assets formed another club and they had to apply to the league.
Where’s the punishment there? What you are suggesting as a ‘punishment’ is actually not awarding a brand new club a triple promotion.
As for some clubs attendances being down, last report I saw it was it was ‘all’ clubs bar Celtic. So much so that the amount of people going into games is going to be higher for all these clubs.
As for your TV income, Rangers & Celtic scooped the vast majority. To my knowledge the reduction has not been made public but I think it’s logical assume the vast amount they had was removed. In their absence all the other clubs get more televised games meaning more of their games being shown meaning more money in their coffers.
So on your ‘current (non) evidence it appears that you haven’t go a clue what you are talking about
Rangers were not demoted to division 3, rather Sevco (the club Rangers became when it was clear liquidation was only option) were admitted into the SFL after formally applying after being banished from the SPL. Division 3 was the only option as there are plenty of SFL clubs struggling to make ends meet by paying income tax and vat, so they could not allow a club to walk away from millions of pounds of debt due to HRMC and start in Division 1. There was no intention to punish fans, it was a purely a moral desicion. The big question that has never been asked is why Rangers went into admin in first place, they had enough assets to sell last January to tide them through, but chose to liquidate the club and start again debt free. They took that desicion willingly.
The entire article misses the point. There was no “demotion” or punishment. The old Rangers ceased to exist and they were liquidated. The new Rangers are an entirely new entity who simply purchased the assets of the old company. All sorts of rules were stretched to even get the new entity into the Third Division and so there was no realistic alternative even though all clubs knew that there would be certain negative financial implications to not having Rangers in the top division.
The article also misses the point that there would have been perhaps even more serious consequences had Rangers stayed in the division due to fans boycotts etc and the permanent stain that would have left on the Scottish game.
Even more fundamental is that the figures given in the article are simply wrong. Average attendances are down by 10% for the 10 teams in the division but Celtic are down by 25% while the other 9 clubs have actually increased their average attendance by 2.2%. That is not to mention the additional benefit gained by Dundee who would otherwise not even been in the SPL. The only significant loser in those terms is therefore Celtic who have more than made up the shortfall by Champions League revenue.
Unfortunately, it seems this article is attempting to reach an unjustified conclusion based on inaccurate and incomplete information.
Two points
1. Legal formalism: you can credibly claim the Sevco is just a new club unconnected to the old Rangers if you’re also of the view that a football club is just a limited liability company with a league membership- but most people think football clubs are more than that. Is there any real doubt that fans watching the football club in SFL3 that everyone calls Rangers sincerely believe themselves to be following the same football team that they followed last season?
2. I took the data from ESPN and calculated the averages – you present the data in a different way to me but that doesn’t make you right and me wrong- it’s just different. I acknowledged the point that some teams have higher attendance this season- you should also acknowledge that it is not just Celtic that have seen a fall in gates.
A large part of the reason that the debate in Scotland throughout the spring and summer was so acrimonious was that Rangers and their fans refused to see what happened to them as being the consequence of their actions. Everything was presented by them as being “punishment” inflicted on them by a vindictive world.
Rangers were not punished by being demoted. The old company was liquidated. A new company bought the assets and had to apply for membership of the SFA. That required them to have three years of audited accounts. Obviously they could not comply. The SFA therefore transferred the membership of the old Rangers to the new company on Friday 3rd August, the day before the SPL kicked off. This was controversial, but on balance justified in my opinion. There was no guarantee that this was going to happen. There was a real chance that there would be no club able to take up the place in Division 3. At the time the decisions had to be taken about SPL membership Rangers were dead.
The reason that the old Rangers were not allowed to transfer their SPL share to the new Rangers was not because the SPL wanted to punish them. It was simply that the supporters were outraged at the obvious intention to give Rangers preferential treatment and protect them from the consequences of their own actions. If Rangers had been parachuted straight into the SPL it would have confirmed the suspicion of many supporters that the game was rigged and many, many supporters would have walked away in disgust and despair.
If you strip Celtic out of the figures then attendances have risen by 2% this season at the other 9 clubs. How much would they have fallen if Rangers had been given preferential treatment?
By the way, apart from Celtic three other clubs have reduced gates; Hearts, Motherwell and Kilmarnock. Motherwell and Hearts are having poorer seasons, so there’s not much to be learnt there. Of the six clubs with higher averages Dundee United have the most striking figures. Their average has risen by 22%, due largely to the return of Dundee FC.
1. I take your point about the same fans feel they are following the same team. They undoubtedly, in my view, have the right to claim the ongoing history since they are the fans that created the history. To suggest otherwise would be small minded and ignore the cultural link that exists. But they are not the same entity and their treatment has reflected that. Culturally and emotionally the club may exist beyond the life of the company but it is the company that held the SPL share not some abstract notion of “the club”. The SPL never made, nor had the opportunity to make, a decision to “demote” Rangers, they had a vote on whether to accept the Newco as a member – two very different things.
2. I had used the statistics from the SPLs own website. I have checked ESPN and their site shows different figures. It appears the discrepancy between us is promarily based upon the 2 sites showing different figures for Celtics average home gate. However, using ESPN site strengthens my argument! Using their figures the overall league attendance is down only 3.1%. Celtic’s drop is shown as just 10% as you had suggested but the other 9 teams are still 2% up on last season.
It is also worth pointing out that your analysis failed to take into account the benefit teams such as Motherwell and Dundee United have had in terms of additional games in Europe or the other teams who have progressed further in cups due to the weakened Rangers (eg would Inverness really have expected to beat an SPL Rangers 3-0 at Ibrox, thus ensuring the revenue associated with a cup semi-final?).
I think my blog was really about point 1 rather than point 2. the stats are ambiguous, to me at least, so I think it’s too early to tell. If at the end of the season it turns out that the SPL is in a better state this year than last year, then my premise – that “punishing” (or whatever it was) “Rangers” (whoever they are) ended up hurting the SPL- will be false and the discussion irrelevant. But if it turns out that some or all SPL teams have suffered as a result of sending “Rangers” to SFL3, then my point is that there were smarter ways to “punish”. As I hope you can tell by all the inverted commas, I’m not that interested in the philosophical twists and turns, I’m interested in what decision makers wanted to happen and what has actually happened. I think my point stands- there were smarter ways to deal the collapse of old Rangers, which did not involve sending them to SFL3 and did not imply that anyone approved of what was done at old Rangers.
I still have a couple of problems with your argument.
1- The “philosphical twists and turns” aren’t just obscure debating points. It was these notions of right and wrong that aroused the supporters and prevented the decision makers getting their way. The decision makers quite definitely wanted Rangers (in whatever form) in the SPL. When they couldn’t swing that without provoking a possibly disastrous fans revolt they tried to force Rangers into the SFL DIvision 1, with the co-operation of the SFL and SFA “decision makers”. The SFL clubs, backed by their fans, blocked that.
2- You’re basing your argument, at the moment at least, on average attendances across the whole SPL. That is an irrelevant figure. There is no sharing of gate revenue. The SPL clubs are in competition with each other. If a club sees its gates rise then only it is better off. If another club’s gates fall then no-one else suffers from that. Therefore 6 out of the 10 clubs are better off and 4 are worse off.
Clubs whose gates have risen enjoy a possible double benefit. They are more likely to finish above their rivals who are worse off, and thus win more prize money based on position, or win trophies, or qualify for Europe.
If you are analysing the rationale behind decision making based on attendances then it’s very hard to justify using average attendance across the whole SPL unless you are factoring in possible loss of sponsorship to the league. It’s the averages for individual clubs that will dictate decision making.
It’s not that the concepts of “right” and “wrong” are obscure – it’s just that we’re never going to get universal agreement. If your position is that you and the people who you say agree with you are morally right and that people who give a different account of events or motives are just morally wrong then “go in peace” as they say- there’s no resolving the argument. If on the other hand you accept (a) something had to be done to demonstrate that the conduct of Rangers management could not be condoned and (b) sending Rangers to SFL3 may end up harming the financial security of some SPL clubs, then we can have a discussion about whether there were alternatives to (b) while at the same time respecting (a).
I wasn’t really trying to make the moral case for the outcome we got. I was arguing that the overwhelming support for a moral stance by supporters of the other clubs created a political and commercial reality that couldn’t be ignored. I’m not saying I’m better for supporting that outcome. I do say I’m being more realistic.
Your argument seems to be based on a hypothetical alternative that was never available to the decision makers. If they could have got the alternative outcome that you mooted then the SPL would undoubtedly have taken it. There will be bad consequences, for some at least, arising from Rangers being in the 3rd Division. However, that does not necessarily mean the decision was wrong. Given the stance of supporters it is probably realistic to argue that the practical consequences of ushering Rangers into the SPL would have been worse. We can never know for sure, but when all the possible outcomes have some damaging results it isn’t reasonable to point at those that did arise from the eventual outcome and then say “it was the wrong decision – we should have done something else”.
My suggestion is that new Rangers could have been admitted to the SPL on agreement that visiting teams were paid 50% of the gate. Not feasible? SPL make their own rules. Not acceptable to the fans? If the money was invested to raise the standards of the other clubs, why would their fans object? And as for you last sentence- if there is a better alternative it’s reasonable to discuss it; what’s not reasonable is vetoing a better alternative.
Stefan – the most interesting thing here was that what decision makers wanted and what actually happened are completely separate; the decison-makers were effectively forced into making decision that they didn’t wish to happen.
What we can say is that the predicted armageddon which decision-makers loudly trumpeted as the consequence of them not getting their way simply didn’t happen. What has actually happened is that the prognostications of doom were wide of the mark, and the analysis of fans and others sceptical of the soothsaying qualities of club owners have proven far more reliable.
“Armageddon” would be a bit of an overstatement, certainly not my words. “Financially disastrous” – that might be appropriate, and you’re right to say that forecast might turn out to be wrong- I was only only suggesting that there are some straws in the wind. It’s too early to tell (as Chou-En Lai said of the consequences of the French Revolution), but what if Hearts and maybe one or two other SPL clubs were in administration by the end of the season? Would you then agree that the decision harmed the SPL? I suspect you might then argue that such a turn of events was attributable to something else than the Rangers decision. So let’s put it this way- are there any circumstances which could lead you to the conclusion that there was a better way to “punish” Rangers?
I used armageddon not to imply you’d used it Stefan, but that it was very much the language of the establishment and their various mouthpieces in the press at the time when the various bodies were trying to work out what to do.
Rangers’ punishment was that they were treated more favourably than any previous new entrant to the competition, rather than the entire rulebook being bent to accommodate them. I think had the punishment been even more favourable then the consequences on the fabric of Scottish football would have been significant, as the bedrock of fans would have slowly wandered away, unable to stomach being part of a competition that had no integrity, in addition to the longstanding problem of having naff-all competition. That was the alternative on the table, and it was a moral call rather than one based on evidence per se.
Stefan, I particularly like your idea that The Rangers might be accumulating a warchest. If that were really the case do you think they’d be rushing a share issue through just now? Given they can’t buy anyone for a year does it not strike you as odd? I think there’s a hole in the finances already, in spite of their world record (in Scotland) attendances. Shame.
I have no idea why Rangers are issuing shares, but as a general matter of business finance companies do not only issue shares when they are short of cash; as a matter of fact, when you’re short of cash is often the most difficult time to issue shares. Let’s see what happens.
I’m not sure if you understand the depth of feeling there was in Scotland (and among fans elsewhere, of clubs that play in the SPL) there was against the idea that a new ‘Rangers’ would be allowed into the top flight.
Have you seen not only the debt incurred by the old Rangers? Have you seen the more than a decade long abuse of tax avoidance and registration issues?
If that club were to die, and a new one – with the same crest, shirts etc, and zero debt, be allowed to roll along as if nothing had happened, then there would be simply NO point in playing football in Scotland.
To suggest something as arbitrary as a 50% gate return, is a nonsense in my view and completely places commercial interests above moral or sporting interests.
There was simply zero options but to allow the new club to start off where any other club should (although it could be argued they are higher than they should).
The clubs, who were aware they may be cutting their nose off to some degree, are to be commended in this day and age for making such a call.
Having written about this before, I fully understand the depth of feeling- I also understand the depth of feeling that drives desperate people to become suicide bombers. I understand, but I don’t empathize- no matter how much you detest what the managers of Rangers did, I don’t think the decision made sense, and I think there were smarter alternatives, which is why I posted the blog. You say “there were simply zero options”- this is where we disagree- my opinion is that there are always options- including my suggestion. But at least we do agree in the end: “they may cutting their nose off to some degree”. That’s my point.
“SPL makes its own rules”; yes, but only with the quite ridiculous 11-1 voting structure, a structure that was attempted to be changed very recently but for, ironically enough, two clubs (celtic & aberdeen) voting against it.
Secondly the SPL is an invitational league, and my understanding is that any new club invited to join must produce 3yrs financial accounts before being elected to join. Sevco 5088 as they were in July 2012, could not produce that obviously. It should be noted that when Dundee were nominated as “Club 12”, their mad scramble to provide information to the SPL board saw them meet the deadline by only a matter of minutes.
There was realistically zero prospect of admitting Rangers to the SPL. It is a pertinent point to suggest that fans of other clubs saw this as a form of comeuppance for what is seen in Scotland as a colossal lack of respect shown over the years to so-called lesser clubs. In short, your idea of the club as an emotional entity rather than a ltd co works both ways – Scottish football clubs have been raped by the “old firm”‘s wanton lust to have money and bragging rights at the expense of the moral corruption of the sport.
Here in Scotland, the term “armageddon” has been adopted as a satirical irony amongst fans of SPL clubs who are currently enjoying the best and most competitive championship in years.
If Hearts or anyone else go to the wall, it will be symptomatic of a wider malaise in Scottish football, not because Rangers went bust, but because Rangers existed in their form at all for the past 20yrs as others tried to keep up.
Let’s not forget something else here, Rangers face the very real prospect of going bust again.
“there was realistically zero prospect of admitting Rangers to the SPL”- this is where we disagree. My opinion is that the clubs can agree pretty much anything they want (and I think history tends to support this interpretation). The fact is that in the case the clubs didn’t want to. As Ciaran says “they may cutting their nose off to some degree” – this is what I find interesting. In my opinion it’s a mistake, but it’s too early to be sure.
I don’t ‘detest’, my over riding point is that the competition would be deemed worthless by the continued involvement of a (phoenix) club that had cheated in that competition (and who could yet be relieved of many trophies from that period).
Cutting off one’s nose was your point, mine was that this was the correct, nay the only rightful action.
To do otherwise would have buried integrity, left a permanent cloud over the league and killed the very reasons people play, follow or enjoy sport.
Stefan, it is extremely simplistic to simply suggest that clubs “didn’t want to” change the rules to admit newco Rangers to the SPL. Dundee Utd Chairman performed a u-turn on his thinking of the matter when he was faced with the threat of a widespread boycott of his own club’s supporters for home games if Rangers were allowed in. Oldco Rangers owed Dundee Utd a fee of c£80k for security arrangements at a match between the sides and were steadfastly refusing to pay. The depth of feeling among Utd supporters, correctly in my opinion was to take the stand that they did. Had Mr Thompson voted Rangers in, he faced the very real prospect of his own club, already teetering on the brink since the withdrawal of his late father’s bankrolling of the club, going to the wall.
Motherwell, another club who have been in administration and could go there again, put the vote to their fans. They also let their feelings be known and there was the implicit threat of boycotts.
So yes, I could go out the front door right now and run a marathon in world record time. But there is realistically no prospect of my being able to do this.
Kevin, I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying, but here is an interpretation:
(a) my suggestion (keeping Rangers in the SPL but making them pay 50% of the gate to the visiting team) is like running “a marathon in world record time”. Impractical, but clearly a very great achievement. So we agree that my “modest proposal” would have been a better course of action, if feasible, than the one chosen.
(b) the reason that the club directors, who have a legal responsibility to safeguard the best interests of the limited companies in which they are employed, chose not to adopt a plan along the lines I have suggested is because they were intimidated by the the threat of boycotts by fans (boycotts which, incidentally, are threatened every day of the week by fans of some sports team or other somewhere in the world, but which almost never materialize in practice).
Am I missing something here?
PS, to be clear – Dundee Utd Chairman Steven Thompson publicly stated his wish was for Rangers to be re-admitted, and then changed his mind.
I think the row in Scottish football this week about the forthcoming cup tie between Dundee United and Rangers illustrates why your idea couldn’t have worked.
Rangers are refusing to take tickets for the match in Dundee explicitly to punish Dundee United for, in their view, being one of the clubs most hostile to Rangers. Rangers are doing so to pander to their fans, or to avoid antagonising them if one is being more charitable. This boycott is no fleeting gesture. It arises from deep bitterness within Scottish football that won’t be dispelled by a spot of financially based rationality. The game doesn’t work that way.
The Rangers support were adamant that they didn’t want to be in the SPL if they were financially hobbled. They saw it as bankrolling their persecutors, while being humiliated on the pitch. The idea that they could accept 50% of the gate money going to their hated rivals is beyond far fetched.
Even if the Rangers fans could have been persuaded it’s hard to see how that outcome would have fitted Charles Green’s business plan. Rangers are getting huge crowds in the 3rd Division and paying more modest wages than they would have had to in the SPL. There are still clearly financial constraints. Your plan would have seen a cut in revenue (50% of smaller gates, admittedly offset by higher TV money) and increase in costs (ie higher wages). It wouldn’t have fitted Green’s plan, which is to build up the club financially and then cash in. It would therefore have made perfect sense for Green to refuse a place in the SPL conditional on sacrificing a large proportion of their gate revenue. Financial prudence was perfectly aligned with the need to keep the Rangers support sweet so they would buy their season tickets. Green was very vulnerable on that point, and needed to appease the support so they would pay up.
If the other SPL clubs could have swung such a deal they would have done so. The trouble wasn’t just the pesky supporters of the other SPL clubs. Rangers themselves would not, and could not, have accepted it.
You might be right- It’s hard to tell what would have happened had there been serious negotiations. Every comment on this post seems to have adopted Margaret Thatcher old dictum “there is no alternative”- I’ve always disliked that philosophy myself. your argument seems to be that not only would the SPL club fans not have accepted it (everyone else’s argument) but that Rangers fans would not have. It doesn’t bode well for when Ranger get promoted back to the SPL. surely this way the bitterness will be even greater by then? Maybe they should have been allowed to go and play in England?
“surely the bitterness will be even greater by then”
Don’t underestimate Scottish football supporters’ capacity for bitterness. Check out the comments from Green about Rangers being promoted to the SPL.
http://www.talksport.co.uk/sports-news/football/121029/exclusive-green-rangers-will-never-play-spl-while-im-charge-184094
“While I’m Chief Executive, Rangers will not play in the Scottish Premier League.
[If that situation arose], I would go out to the fans, as we did earlier in the year, when they were consulted as to what division they wanted to play in. They wanted to play in the Third Division and we as investors listened to them and were happy to do that.
And we would go back to them again. But my position wouldn’t have changed. If they wanted to go back into the SPL, then fine. But I won’t be Chief Executive.”
Now there may be an element of showboating to make the Rangers supporters feel good, and you may feel that when it came to the crunch Green would be pleading with the supporters to accept entry to the SPL. However, I don’t think it’s as simple as that.
Taking the long term view it is a high risk strategy to stoke up the bitterness and persecution complex of the Rangers supporters. Clearly Green is hoping that in the longer term Rangers could get into a European league, or into English football (which seems unlikely given the reluctance to accept them in England).
If neither of these options are feasible then Rangers either have to confront their supporters and accept promotion to the SPL or they have to engineer a restructuring of Scottish football to their liking. That would probably entail a collapse of the SPL and the surviving clubs being readmitted to a Rangers dominated SFL.
That’s why I call it a high risk long term option to feed the bitterness of the support. That makes it harder to reach a viable, rational compromise. It would commit Rangers to an all or nothing strategy, which requires them either to fail or to succeed at the expense of the rest of Scottish football. Ruling out any negotiated compromise solution greatly reduces Rangers ability to influence other clubs and thus the final outcome, which might be entirely unpredictable. By that time Green probably plans to have cashed in and left Scotland. I believe that he is locked in for only 12 months after the share sale.
It might therefore be entirely rational to take what looks like an extreme and irrational anti-SPL stance if he feels he can get out quickly enough, either selling up to people who can’t see or are indifferent to the longer term dangers, or finding buyers who are thick skinned enough to go against the supporters’ wishes. Can he find such prospective owners? I think he probably can, in both categories, and at a price that leaves him with a good profit.
Interesting comment. but showboating in Scottish football- surely not?