There was a sketch on The Fast Show that featured a business woman who would present ideas only to be completely ignored, however, when that idea was presented by someone else, everyone sat up, took notice and agreed that it was an excellent one – Rangers are that woman, the SPFL is everyone else.
For years Neil Doncaster and his colleagues at the league’s governing body have been getting away with underselling and sometimes not selling our game, sponsorless competitions appearing frequently during his tenure as CEO.
When Rangers have tried to petition for change it has fallen on deaf ears until now when a band of non-Old Firm brothers have commissioned an investigation by Deloitte into the value for money we are getting out of those who run our game, spoiler alert, we aren’t.
Aberdeen chairman Dave Cormack last week spoke about the early findings and they don’t make for good reading for Doncaster:
“We believe we can get to £50million in the next five-to-10 years.
“We believe there’s an immediate 20-30 per cent increase and we’re working on that with Deloitte.”
So we’re currently sitting close to £23m less – almost double than the current £27m deal – than we should be getting a year in relation to viewing figures, number of televised matches and what other similar countries get for their deals.
That Doncaster sanctioned a deal that saw us pay a consultancy firm a six-figure sum to negotiate a sponsor for the league says it all about his competence – when the findings are fully published it should be the final nail in his coffin – should.
Barry Hearn was right all those years ago about the inadequacies of those running the game in Scotland and the clubs have been paying the price for it ever since.