It is a smart move to settle out of court when you know that you have no chance of winning.
Luckily for the Holding Company Vehicle, there are a couple of smart people in the Sevco High command.
Since the last adjournment, they have been reaching out to General Ashley.
I understand that most of this was put in place without the esteemed chairman being briefed.
Within the last fortnight, the final details of a deal were ironed out.
Three members of the Sevco High Command sat down with several of Ashley’s top advisers.
The plenipotentiaries from the Holding Company Vehicle frankly conceded that Big Mike had two bullets in the gun that he had aimed at Ibrox.
Moreover, they admitted that either of them, if fired, could kill the basket of assets.
They were:
- The likely financial penalty that they would incur if the court case was heard to a conclusion and Ashley won.
- Two years’ worth of unsold stock that Ashley could invoice them for at any time.
However, these Quintessentially British chaps point out that, if that happened then Big Mike would lose a retail outlet and an advertising hoarding for this merchandise at Ibrox.
The Sevco High Command chaps came up with a plan that took those two bullets from the Sports Direct revolver.
However, it required two things to work:
- An unquestioning local media.
- A gullible customer base.
Result!
Essentially the fans will pick up the tab for the unsold stock by being encouraged to buy it.
With the court case dropped look for the crests and trademarks being once more utilised by Ashley’s business empire.
I’ve also been disabused of the notion that the deal is for only one year.
The spin on this has been carefully choreographed and the silence from Shirebrook has been part of the deal.
Quite frankly, Big Mike is happy for The People to have a victory parade all the way into his shop at Ibrox!
His 44 magnum invoice was for unsold stock and the attendant costs from warehousing and handling etc.
The Sevco High Command couldn’t pay it, but now The People will take care of that.
How much had that potential invoice grown to?
Well, let’s just say that it will be a long time before there are any net profits for the Holding Company Vehicle to benefit from!
Big Mike will be the first in line as the tills ring in the megastore.
Of course, this is the sort of deal that should be investigated by a journalist working the patch.
Then again, they’re too busy dreaming up new superlatives to embellish press releases about billionaires.
Except for billionaires like Mr Ashley.
Real ones that aren’t Off The Radar.
It’s easy to dismiss this as being a bad deal phil, and in the short term it may well be, but it appears as if in a years time sevco will be free to negotiate their own deals, rather than being tied to a seven year deal where they were making nothing, or as you allude to it was costing them money……..i would have much preferred to see them tied to sports direct for the full term of their contract…….so seems like a good deal for them……unfortunately…….and a victory over ashley…..hopefully i’m wrong….!
So BMA does walking away, leaving the hubristic hordes rejoicing, willingly blind to the fact that not only has KingCo used the hordes’ own money to pay off the only billionaire that ever wanted to fund them, but are also those same hordes’ money to buy the same jerseys, off the same guy, that they specifically told them NOT to buy from last year, and the year before that.
As someone else said, it’s not juts LIKE a cult, it really actually IS a cult, the cult of the unseen Masonic hand that keeps their dulled thick minds on the snakes and ladders.
No other organisation could have this much power over so many people, or even Peepil, without there being an underlying directive force at work, this is now plain for all to see.
And yet some folk, even some Celtic fans, still deny its very existence, the influence of the nipple baring trouser rollers and their effect on this ‘club/racket’, and it seeming ability to keep squirming out of everything, up to and including the alleged ‘Cold Shoulder’ for Captin King …
All this only goes to show that you really can tell some folk anything or, as Tricky Dicky Nixon himself put it
‘People don’t believe anything until they see it on television.’
But, once they DO se it in television, it’s like it’s come from the words of The Almighty himself, and therefore cannot be questioned.
Phil, you have produced some outstanding journalistic work here, and have put journalists across Europe to shame with your capacity for dismantling this fairy story over a single day.
An absolute credit to the your profession indeed. It’s just sad that you might well be one of the very few credits on that otherwise now discredited profession left, as this entire saga continues to prove to us.
All the very best to you and yours.
King is privately furious with club1872 CIC.
He had those fans funds earmarked for his rights issue. He wanted that cash.
Always believe the exact opposite of what this guy states.
Ashley has just milked massive blue money out their game.
Who used Julian J to buy Ashley’s shares? And is it dodgy money out of south Africa? Has King bought shares at 27.5p but refused the takeover panel order to offer 20p to everyone else?
Will Julian always vote with King neutralizing the new CIC vote?
Phil – see MASH have sold their shares to Club 1872 (see link below). Looks like this retail megadeal is just a way for them to offload the stocks of old shirts in the warehouse to the gullible and then sell/dump shares to/on said gullible, leaving both MASH and (probably) King to walk away with their trousers stuffed with the gullibles’ dosh. King will even be hailed as a departing Messiah. Until it dawns on them that what they’ve bought into is nothing more than hot air, hubris and an over-leveraged disaster of a club/company/engine room/ethereal deity waiting to fall off a cliff. This is classic private equity tactics. Buy a company, load it with debt, some of which you spend on improving short-term performance (in this case loading it with new players – although all you have to do here is raise the expectation of improved performance for the gullible to fall for it) and then announce a flotation so you can sell it to some other sucker for a profit.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/40386013
Compliments to the master chef yet again. I hope you don’t mind me digressing slightly Phil.
I’ve just read that bit of keech which is presented as journalism by Keech in the daily intellectually challenged. Sports journalist of the year my erse. Having read it twice , for comedic value, I have concluded that Keech must spend most of his time resident in Jabba’s anal canal.
Please keep at them Phil . and unravelling their wee gullible delusion.
The bottom line is that King and his Board are selling sports clothes for Mike Ashley to make profits for Mike Ashley.
Mike Ashley owns all Rangers shops and he employs all shops staff.
It’s a first that last year’s third placed shirt is this year’s big seller for any club. How embarrassing King’s climbdown is.
Outgoing players leaving shirts for arriving players.
“The bottom line is that King and his Board are selling sports clothes for Mike Ashley to make profits for Mike Ashley.”
Exactly.
Fortuitous that 32 RED gave Sevco another “deal” so that last season’s shirts could be shifted. I wonder if Big Mike spoke to 32 RED behind the scenes.
Keep shining the light ..
In the 1980s buying a two year old strip was common place as clubs changed their kits every 3 or 4 years. But with shirts being changed every year, even the knuckledraggers can’t be as stupid as to bail out the club by buying shirts they won’t wear!
By my calculations they would have to sell 460 000 shirts at £45 a pop to make £1m. Based on 50% share of 9.6% net profit as per previously mentioned SD group figures from 2016. That’s a lot of fabric lol
Looks like big mike’s celt
the jersey’s!
AYE TWICE
Forgot to add. SD have also issued THREE PROFIT WARNINGS since last December.
Just had a quick look at SD’s financial figures for 2015-16. Don’t know if replica strip sales mirrors the group as a whole but if it does the gullibillies are being taken for a right ride. SD made 9.6% NET PROFIT after tax. This would give sevco a 50% share of 4.8% or 4.8p in the £. The lying King can fair cut a deal!!!!!
Priceless. So the Sevconites have boycotted merchandise for a couple of years. And now the deal announced to great fanfare is that the majority of net profits goes to the club – but what they don’t mention is that the only way ANY net profits can eventually accrue is for the entire backlog of unsold stock – which they still owe him for – to be shifted.
And, as those who have been watching this comedy for some time already know, the fact that the SD deal involved the club owing Ashley for all unsold stock has already been aired on Follow Follow, Rangers Media etc. But now that’s all mysteriously forgotten. Just like the “red card” protest – which insisted that the rejection of CVA would mean the death of the club and the extinction of its history – was forgotten within hours of the CVA being rejected and the club being liquidated.
The sheer concentration of weapons-grade stupidity in their fanbase still takes the breath away at times. It is delicious to know that these overweight sheep are being fleeced at world record rates as we speak. I am no fan of Ashley, but these is a reason why he is a billionnaire, and the Sevco hordes are nillionaires.
Nillionaires …bravo ??
It would not surprise me to discover that Sevco spend more money on PR and spin than they do on general operating costs. The way L5 and Jabba can spin a positive from any situation is almost a thing of marvel! Why Jabba hasn’t been headhunted by the Tories to turn around the negative publicity re a shambolic election and various domestic tragedies (Manchester, London, Grenfall, etc.) is staggering.
I know why, the general British public are a lot more savvy than the average moonbeam bullshit-swallowing Sevvy numpty.
Phil, how did you get on regards the crumbling stadium certificates ? Did the GCC release said certificate info under the FOI Act as requested ?
The Gift that keeps giving..
Thank you Phil.
Why is the world media and fifa especially not looking into the books and the going ons at sevco. As much as im happy celtic running a mock all season but if rangers don’t get better and do something out of this world in terms of a run in European competitions and won the league, then I can only see rangers back in the lower league’s às there skint. There becoming more of a “who’s that” than a has-been lol As the kinks said “The tax man’s taking all my dough and left me in a stately home. And we, play football, the Celtic way. Yeah!!
World media won’t care much about Scottish Football because it doesn’t sell. Had this been in a Big League ie England or Spain. Then you wouldn’t be able to escape the coverage. Never would work there. Probably why FIFA don’t seem to care either.
I watched a Sevconian on STV and BBC news tonight happily pulling out not one, not two but three Rangers* taps, a scarf, a hoodie and two base baw caps from a big SD bag in the mega store car park.
I’m still laughing.
They sell Rangers taps?? Their ingenuity know no bounds.
Does it turn the water blue?
No, but it will turn the air a foul blue once they all realise the truth of it.
You are a credit to your profession.
Fantastic work.
They’re the ‘Spinal Tap’ of football clubs, only less funny and more tragic. Am becoming obsessed with your website and find myself checking in a couple of times a day to see what the next wobble in the house of cards across the city is going to be. By the way, Phil, any truth in the blurb about Warburton et al dropping their action?
An extra £5m a year to sevco it seems, great piece of work by King. He has really sold the jerseys.!!
I would question that figure very seriously.
Best case scenario on the KPIs is £3m.
However, it would need to be a Brendan Rodgers type season.
Are you sure about that phil?
According to Barry Fergusson in todays DR, “The rangers* retail deal is huge”.
He goes on to say that if Pedro can lead the club into the Europa league group stages “then Rangers” from nowhere would be catapulted towards a whole new level of revenue on two separate fronts”.
He asks his readers to “just think about it for a minute. If Rangers* make £5million from selling strips and another £5million from a decent European run then all of a sudden the financial picture changes massively for my old club”
that’s right massively.
£10million! Just think what a difference a figure of that magnitude could do.
Phil really good work. Always a good read and usually on the ball with all things Sevco.
I’m no rugger chap but wasn’t the old deal 50p for every £10 spent (5% of revenue) rather than a percentage of net profit which it seems is the new deal. SD net margin is 7.2% according to the FT which would need a healthy slice of net profit to make 50p from a tenner but you could claim the lion’s share of profit.
Thank goodness you are here to cut through the sludge that we are exposed to. King’s statement raised so many questions,not one of which any journo was prepared to ask never mind analyse the answer. Best wishes
Excellent work again, as usual, Phil.
Small donation made as promised a couple of weeks back.
HH.
????
Mug.
Lol.
You can lead an Orc to water, but you cannae make it think.
But ye CAN make it buy last year’s jerseys.
Here, do ye think the ‘rebels’ that bought one last year will buy the same one this year again ..?
Hahaha, whit a bunch a fuckin closets!
Funny how the Huns just don’t want to see the obvious.
It’s ‘Mind Control to Major Bam’ wI that mob.
Imagine Peter told us to do the same thing, ‘Buy a jersey ye already own’, then try to tell us through the papers that we’re getting a great deal buying something ye huv tae pay for twice …
There’d be bloody ructions!
Their stupidity is mind boggling. But I just can’t get enough ae it.
This is the funniest thing since Pedro’s tattoo 😀
Dave, are you able to tell us how much “the majority of net profits” adds up to since you liberated the army of XXXL shoppers?
And how many mulliuns that has added to the warchest? I’m sure Mike won’tmind you sharing some little details “to give supporters some insight into the new arangements”
Didn’t take you long to get to the bottom of this. Superb as always Phil.
Cheers Tommy
I second that, 3 top quality articles covering the whole joke show from start to finish.
And, according to James F over on the Tic blog, theres a lot more to come re the details of the entire affair.
The Sevco circus just runs and runs, like watter doon a jakey’s troosers.
Looks like big makes celt
the jersey’s!
AYE TWICE
THE JERSEY BHOYS