DST views with increasing concern the possibility that SPL clubs will vote to allow direct entry of a newco to the SPL with minimal penalties. The overwhelming opinion of supporters in Scotland is that a newco should enter senior football by applying for admission to the SFL 3rd division and working their way up again in a sustainable and honest way. Rangers like all other member clubs must be seen to comply with the rules and honour their debts, otherwise why should fans ever bother to turn up again, knowing for sure that the league is permanently rigged in their favour.
The mantra being repeated by most pundits and the officials of the SPL is that it is in the member clubs’ financial interest that a Rangers newco is immediately admitted to the SPL. The purported grounds are that Rangers along with Celtic bring about £700,000 a year to the other clubs by their fans attendance at matches and the TV deal. The message now being put about is that integrity and fair play is trumped by the financial imperative to survive since Scottish football will supposedly cease to be viable if Rangers are not in the top league. How can this stance be squared with Rangers and Celtic’s insistence in recent years that their departure to England/an Atlantic League would not be detrimental to Scottish football?
These assertions must be strongly challenged by the SPL club chairmen. Firstly, who are making the assertions? Many of the proponents of the “status quo” being essential have a vested interest. Media pundits and the press pack know that there will be far less appetite for their blanket coverage of the Old Firm if there is a transfer embargo and Rangers are facing East Stirlingingshire twice a season rather than Celtic. Their jobs hang in the balance. Clearly Rangers officials and supporters want their club at the top table winning trophies every season with guaranteed European football. They also have a vested interest for either financial or emotional reasons.
Now for the financial reality. In the case of our own club, in a season when AFC is in the top six, Rangers will normally add about 8000 over 2 games to the overall attendances for the season. Including programmes, food and other ancillary sales, the annual revenue is therefore about £200,000. Ranger’s fans represent about 4% of Aberdeen’s gate revenue in an average season, and if we have a good run in Europe, such as 4 seasons ago their effect is reduced to 2% of gate revenue.
Should Dundee (probably the best supported club in the SFL 1st division) be promoted into Rangers place, they have historically brought at least 2000 fans to Aberdeen matches, so the Rangers effect is reduced to £150000. If only 300 AFC fans fail to renew their season tickets and walk away from the club next season as a result of a misguided vote to allow a Rangers newco direct entry to the SPL, the effect of any Rangers support attending Pittodrie will be cancelled out. This is an entirely plausible scenario, which may well be repeated across all the SPL clubs given the strength of feeling being demonstrated across Scotland on this issue. SPL club chairmen will only finally count the cost of their decision when season ticket sales fail to materialise, by which time it will be too late to persuade the fans that the SPL is not permanently rigged in favour of the “too big to fail” clubs. The SPL chairmen should indeed “be careful what they wish for” if they vote for finance over integrity.
The TV deal melt-down scenario must also be challenged. If imaginative thought is applied, an alternative TV deal could be put together which would replace the current tired format. Rugby Super League in England has a £90m 5 year deal with Sky despite having lower attendances than the SPL. That is a better deal than the SPL had, so why can a minority sport with lower support do it and the SPL can’t? Probably because we are competing with the EPL and UEFA games, and therefore get less money and the lunch-time, Friday and Monday evening kick-offs to fill in the TV schedule gaps. If we go for summer football, we would be the only show in town for several weeks of the year and our product would be much more valuable. We could increase the league size as the customers want, have bigger play offs to keep the end of the season alive, and if OF games are actually essential to the deal, re-introduce the old League Cup qualifying groups at the start of the season with Rangers and Celtic in the same 4 team group to start the season with 2 OF games before the league starts. Overall, a revised programme for the season could easily generate the same cash as before from a TV deal, whether Rangers are in the SPL or not.
Finally let us address the potential absence of £500,000 a year income from TV. This could be replaced by increasing the average home gate by attracting only 1000 extra fans to every home game. The latent support for a successful Aberdeen FC is there to be had. 18,000 made the long trip to Glasgow for a 1215 kick-off only last month. If the AFC product on the pitch was more attractive and marketed as enthusiastically as a certain well known North-East house building company’s product, a target of 1000 extra season ticket fans to replace the TV income could easily be reached.
In summary, AFC like all the other SPL clubs does not need Rangers in the SPL to survive and thrive, and must vote for integrity in our national game.
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