DAVE KING believes Rangers are still ‘another few months’ away from concluding their lengthy courtroom battle with Sports Direct.
The Ibrox chairman has been involved in a series of legal spats with the firm owned by billionaire businessman Mike Ashley since assuming control of the Light Blues three years ago following regime change.
Supporters ended their boycott of official merchandise earlier this year and a new retail agreement that runs for the next three seasons has been signed with Danish manufacturer Hummel.
Shareholders were given a brief update on the current state of play at the Annual General Meeting on Tuesday morning but Rangers remain embroiled in litigation as they spend significant sums to defend their position.
King said: “That’s a difficult one. Sports Direct have been quite relentless, I think unfairly.
“They have gone off and taken the usual urgent applications and interim interdicts, which they would tend to be successful at. But whether they can achieve it long-term I don’t know.
“I do feel we are coming to the end but we probably still have another few months to go before we can look at any calm at all in the Sports Direct. They still seem quite determined to litigate.”
Chairman King vowed that Rangers wouldn’t back down and ‘give Sports Direct what they want’ as he gets set to continue his fight with Ashley in the coming weeks.
The cost of being without a normalised income from their retail operation was again laid bare during the last financial year as RIFC plc posted a loss of £14.3million to June, 30 2018.
King said: “Our commercial and marketing function has seen the benefit of the return of Rangers to top level football and this is now being reflected in the value we are able to attract from our commercial partners at the various levels of relationship that we have with them.
“Unfortunately, Sports Direct has again done its best to interrupt our retail operations by engaging in the type of litigation that they are by now famous for. In my opinion, they use urgent and interim proceedings so that they can drown the court in papers that cannot be adequately reviewed in time.
“This allows them to get interim relief pending a full ventilation of the facts. In the final analysis Sports Direct has consistently failed with its bullying tactics and I anticipate a similar outcome to the present litigation.
“Overall, our commercial activities continue to provide greater revenue and profit for the Club but we need to be challenging at the top of the Scottish Premiership and be consistently back in Europe beyond the qualifying stages before we can generate the levels of sponsorship that a club of our size and history ought to achieve.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel