RANGERS chairman Dave King has hailed the club's landmark merchandising deal with Sports Direct as testimony to the board's refusal to back down in the face of the bullying tactics of the retailer's controversial owner Mike Ashley.
Supporters of the Ibrox side were given the green light to purchase strips again yesterday after an agreement between the two previously warring parties which King said called "by far the most significant event" at the club "since regime change".
Rather than an existing deal through Rangers Retail Ltd which saw the Ibrox side claim just around 4% of the cash from any strip purchase - which led to a supporter boycott and the club indicating its notice to enter a punitive seven-year notice period - a new joint venture has been started with Sports Direct which will see Rangers receive the majority of net profits from the Megastore and Webstore, and an equal share of all sales from Sports Direct.
Read more: Rangers chairman Dave King: Sports Direct deal is first part of three-point plan to catch Celtic
Rangers can re-evaluate the deal again 12 months down the line but King claimed last night that the agreement would help the club compete with Celtic on the pitch and praised the board for being undeterred by a "level of ferocity", which included a threat of jail against King for breaching a court injunction for talking about Sports Direct in an interview with Sky Sports. As a result of the deal, Rangers drop all threat of legal action against Ashley and Sports Direct, with each party paying its own legal costs.
“I don’t think they came round to our way of thinking," said King. "What happened was the level of intensity in the litigation, with all our directors being sued in a personal capacity and issued with injunctions which meant we couldn’t talk about Sports Direct, that I could have gone to jail last Christmas for saying unkind things about them.
“We had a level of ferocity at us from Sports Direct for about a year," he added. "In my view, it’s the fact that didn’t work and we resolved not to give in. I said ‘you can do what you like, you can try and put me in jail’. But we had come to do a job for the club and we will not back down."
Read more: Rangers chairman Dave King: Sports Direct deal is first part of three-point plan to catch Celtic
While certain numbers were still being kept under wraps for commercial reasons, King said last night that Rangers supporters buying merchandise in their previous numbers would provide a "significant" and "unbudgeted" stream of revenue into the club. He said that the total figure invested in the club since ousting the previous board back in March 2015 was north of £30m, with the club's summer transfer outlay coming from "interest free loans" from himself and other existing investors.
"What I can say is that the historical profits of Rangers Retail were very, very substantial," said King. "If we can get back to a normalised basis it is a significant increase of funds into the club, none of which has been budgeted for."
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