The Rangers Takeover Finally Receives Serious Mainstream Attention

As Nick Harris deploys his expert investigative skills to the Ibrox takeover story, so gushing inaccuracies are highlighted.

On the Huddle Breakdown podcast and blog, we have extensively discussed the potential takeover of The Rangers by parties claimed to be associated with the San Francisco 49ers American football team.

Why have we done this?

1. It is the biggest story in Scottish football and therefore of widespread interest.

2. It potentially impacts Celtic as it may affect the Scottish footballing competitive landscape, and we are interested in how Celtic responds.

3. The reporting, such as it is, has been limited to “Rangers” minded “journalists” and outlets and has been predictably gushing in anticipation of a mega-buck takeover and squillions poured into the club. Actual scrutiny of how this will be achieved, the buyers, the motivations of the sellers, and what the mechanisms will be to transfer the squillions into footballers, is predictably ignored.

4. “Obsessed, Timmy”. Clearly.

Therefore it was with some interest I came upon this piece in The Nutmeg from esteemed investigative journalist Nick Harris. Nick has also made the piece available on his Sporting Intelligence platform.

Nick is the go-to journalist for all the details on the Manchester City financial war with the English Premier League. His biography is here – this is a serious, heavyweight journalist and given his portfolio, the right sort of individual to write about a franchise with the shady past of the Ibrox clubs.

Nutmegged

As often happens with journalists, Nick fell slightly foul of the Nutmeg sub-editor’s choice of headline. This came to light when I asked him the following in response to his piece.

Nick was kind enough to provide the following extensive reply which shed further light upon the impending takeover.

The reply is too long to fit in a screen grab so I have repeated it here and you can see this in the comments on the Nutmeg site under the original article.

“Hi Alan, apologies for the delay. I did see the comment on Friday and meant to reply but other stuff got in the way. First, thanks for reading and for your question.

On the "Megabucks makeover? It's unlikely" that wasn't the start of the piece but rather the headline on the Nutmeg Substack version of it. The piece, as with all mu Nutmeg work, also appears on the Sporting Intelligence Substack, in this case here (https://sportingintelligence832.substack.com/p/rangers-on-verge-of-megabucks-american). The headline on that version said: "Rangers on verge of megabucks American transformational takeover … or are they?"

My intention with that headline was to reflect that much reporting has gushed about how lucrative the proposed takeover will be ... but also question whether in fact that reporting is accurate. ie: we don't know much more than we know.

The other headline - and forgive my focus on nuance - said in the headline "It's unlikely", which is a bit more definitive than "we don't know". I didn't write the headline on the Nutmeg version, but I'll also address your other key, legitimate point.

My closing opinion, based on what I've been able to find out speaking to people on both sides of the Atlantic, is there are NOT a load of 49ers billionaires waiting to chuck a load of money at Rangers. The wealth of the key guy named so far is opaque at best. I think whoever IS involved is targeting Rangers because, in effect, Rangers are distressed as as asset (hence King and others wanting out) and because the 49ers folk (whichever individuals that turns out to be) probably smell a cheap acquisition below market price, whichever of the three prices I explored you use.

On the flip side, they clearly ARE trying to get a majority stake, as I said, and as cheaply as possible, but what I'm hearing is that they, certainly by last week, didn't have certainty over quite how that 51% would be made up; and that's even before doing financial due diligence which could reveal all kinds of other unpalatable things (emphasis on could, not will); if that were the case then any buyer would want to drive the acquisition price down further. As for investment, the 49ers, or rather the investment arm of the 49ers, only have one football club to date, which is Leeds, and as the only case study we can focus on in relation to the 49ers, the reality is they bought full control of Leeds and then invested sufficiently for them to be currently top of the Championship. One caveat to that is they all had a big player sell-off but that, as you know, is almost always the case for a Championship club if they don't bounce back quickly following an English PL relegation.

Given that one motivation for a Rangers takeover, as I wrote, seems to be a potential flip, whether in 3 years or 5 or whatever, a logical assumption has to be that the asset value of the club HAS to grow for that to happen. That will only really happen if Rangers become vaguely competitive again and perhaps even threaten in the coming years to qualify for the Champions League. How do you become competitive? By having better players. How do you get better players? Develop them over years, which will obviously be one aim. But hiring them (better players than now) is quickest, either via buying or loaning, both of which cost money in fees and / or wages. Thus I WOULD expect - if the takeover happens and it remains an if - there to be investment in playing squad. But not "megabucks" money, certainly not tens of millions on players, let alone hundreds of millions. That just isn't going to happen. Some millions, in the low single-digit millions range? That would be my best guess from what I've heard. But as with the tone of the whole piece, there is SO much more we still don't than we do. And the fact that none of the key players from the 49ers side have said a word on the record, or indeed answered a single one of the questions I've put forward ... we don't know.”

Gush-less

Thanks again to Nick Harris.

For the record, neither I nor he are saying that there isn’t interest in purchasing The Rangers from parties associated with the San Francisco 49ers nor that some form of takeover will not happen. On the contrary, FWIIW, I suspect a deal will be done but at a much-reduced price.

What shape that new ownership takes and the impacts thereof, are a matter of conjecture only and we do not have sufficient information to say with certainty.

However, given:

· the extensive long-term history of loss-making;

· the current austerity drive to get costs down nearer to revenues;

· the lack of automatic Champions League qualification opportunities;

· the unfeasibility of building a new stadium;

· the difficulty of raising commercial revenues in the short term given recent and continuous self-inflicted legal reputational damage;

· the relative lack of asset value in the current squad hampering short-term player-trading “wins”; and

· the existing resource gap to Celtic

then as one friend put it to me “all their work is in front of them”.

But as I said, I’m sure something will come of it!