1/n Will big finance help football/sport and in what circumstances? Sport needs money. A lot of it. If it was your money, would you invest it in your sport or your club? If so, what on what conditions. Run that stress test and it helps clarify. I will do it now at a football club

2/n. fresh capital wants great governance. Football has way too many governing bodies often in conflict. If the club I want to assess is #RangersFC I’m talking about the #spfl, #sfa, #holyrood #Westminster,
#uefa and #fifa. I’m thinking: really? Can I feel confidence is that?

3/n I look at TAM. Total addressable market. Scotland is way too small. I’d very early on be assessing the chances of “environmental change”. Or walking away. Let’s say I convince myself: there will be horizontal regrouping around big clubs. A super league maybe.

4/n so if I buy ajax or rangers or Benfica I’m basically buying a “call option” on a superleague. I’m still interested, especially if I can get rangers at a “fire sale” price. So what is the cost of the option? The premium? I need to do micro analysis on the business model.

4/n. Can it breakeven so I can hold my call option for nothing? That would be my acid test. If yes, I’m in. So, I’d look at revenue streams. And what could be grown. I’d see Celtic benfica ajax and their success on player trading. Nice. But I’d ask, post covid, is that realistic?

5/n. I’d say probably not to the same extent. Transfer fees outwith the very top end will be much rarer. And to do it you need excellence in data science. Let’s come back to tech as a differentiator. So excluding big player profits, what is the Rangers business? Let’s look.

6/n. An exceptionally loyal fanbase of size. A very big club. So match day, merchandise and good content strategy should work. It’s a community arpu strategy. But only if I can keep my player costs and wages down AND FLEXIBLE. Could I do that? Let’s examine both assumptions here

7/n. And here we hit problems? Who are the Rangers fans today? And how do I grow them? It is a club that doesn’t have a “why” beyond a reaction to something else. They are not for something, they are against something. Let’s call this segment of the fanbase Staunch.

8/n. Staunch are the most loyal of fans. What %? They are your cash cow. Is this a growing segment or an ageing demographic? What other types of fans does the club have? Women, Gen Z ? Mutually exclusive? Staunch as a brand repels new audiences. That’s a bummer.

9/n Could I rebrand totally and hope to gain more new audiences than I’d lose on the Staunch? I’m thinking that Staunch will always come. They shout a lot but they accepted Souness and his catholics. So I’ll try and rebrand. Scotland’s club. Like the Cowboys. Great institution

10/n “What do you mean they don’t like the Scottish brand? Really? They hate the snp?“ Ok, ok, we work on being the home for all Scottish talent. If Celtic buy French boys, we’ll say we are the club interested in nurturing the Scottish game. The SFA will like that. Youth, growth!

11/n “We hate the sfa? Oh come on! Hang on, so this siege mentality for the last 8 years has painted this club into a corner? Why should I invest?” The call option on a super league is what’s left. So new capital needs to hold its nose and milk the Staunch cash cow.

12/n “Yes. Look this will be flipped, ideally for big profit if we get environmental change. We run a tight ship and have a zero cost call option. Forget the rest.“ So, let’s analyse running a tight ship. It’s easy to budget revenues for a club with a full stadium in 2nd place.

13/n You won’t grow them, you won’t get any new sponsor with the Staunch brand, but it is what it is. The odd player sale. The odd run in Europe. Say £50m t/o. If you can keep player costs at 60% of that you can break even. If you get really good using data and AI that’s possible

14/n Clubs like Atalanta and Getafe show how things can be done with low revenues, top people and AI innovation. Here is the problem. “A team in 2nd”. Staunch will never accept a strategy of budgeting to finish 2nd. They will insist on overspending to stop 20inarow.

15/15. Yeah but FFP protects clubs right? Scotland doesn’t have it! So I conclude, even pitching a “zero cost option” strategy, I don’t see big finance investing in Rangers. You need an emotional buyer happy to lose a bucketful. Do the same thinking for your own club. Attractive?