Wings Over Scotland

The pendulum set to determine the presence or otherwise of Sevco Rangers in next season’s Scottish Premier League, which earlier in the week appeared to be conclusively stuck on the “No” side of the clock, seems to have swung back at least partially in favour of the Ibrox club in the last 48 hours.

First of all Aberdeen chairman Stewart Milne refuted an apparent suggestion that the club were certain to vote No to Charles Green’s application for the old club’s SPL share, and now Motherwell have released a document painting a dire picture of the Fir Park side’s prospects without Rangers in the top division, going so far as to threaten the possibility of insolvency, in advance of the Well Society’s decision about their vote.

The document, compiled by the Motherwell board, does contain some balancing views (noting, for example, the possibility of a boycott by both home and away fans in the event of voting Yes, which would damage revenues in that scenario too), but seems tilted in favour of persuading the Society to accept Sevco Rangers’ application. And that’s odd, because of all the “Other 10” SPL members outside the Old Firm, Motherwell are the ones best placed to gain massively from the absence of Rangers – a fact the document surprisingly fails to explore.

The board predict a total loss to Motherwell of around £900,000 a season from the potential absence of Rangers, based on season 2011-12’s revenues which saw the club finish in 3rd place in the SPL. And the most obvious omission from the figures is the fact that without Rangers, Motherwell would instead have finished 2nd, thereby receiving an extra £965,000 from the SPL’s top-heavy prize-money structure.

Immediately, then, as a club challenging at the upper end of the table, Motherwell stand to make an immediate and obvious net gain from the absence of Rangers opening up the chance of a higher league finish. However, we do need to factor in the likelihood that with much of the SPL prize money coming courtesy of Sky, that £965,000 figure could be substantially lower in future.

But there’s much more to the finances of SPL clubs than simply place money. The rejection of Rangers would free up an extra European slot for the other teams in the division, and even lower-grade European football can be extremely lucrative. For example, a pretty modest run in the Europa League in 2008 brought Aberdeen roughly £3 million in extra revenue compared to the season before – a vast sum for any SPL side. (Motherwell’s turnover for an entire season is in the region of £4.5m.)

Even that hefty payday pales in comparison, however, with a Champions League spot, which Motherwell will hold in the coming season as a result of Rangers’ liquidation barring them from competing in the tournament. The premier European tournament represents a cash bonanza for any team that can win a single tie – simply reaching the play-off round before the group stages guarantees a club £1.7m in UEFA prize money, and that’s before TV revenues and gate receipts are taken into account.

Motherwell will join the tournament in the 3rd qualifying round, meaning they must negotiate just one two-legged match against another qualifier in order to pick up that reward. There’s a slim possibility of meeting a quality side, but their opponents are much more likely to be in the vein of Dynamo Potato from Zigizagistan*, and a club of any ambition whatsoever ought to have confidence in the plausible possibility of coming through such a challenge.

(*Pardon our casual racism. Actual clubs participating in last year’s 3rd qualifying round included such household names as Litex Lovech of Bulgaria, FC Ekranas of Lithuania, Shamrock Rovers of Ireland, FC Vaslui of Romania, Zestafoni of Georgia and BATE Borisov of Belarus. As supporters of Aberdeen with indelible memories of Skonto Riga we in no way dismiss such clubs as easy meat for SPL sides, but nor are they by any means insurmountable obstacles. EDIT: see comments.)

If Motherwell were able to win two knockout ties, though, they would hit a jackpot almost beyond fantasy. Reaching the group stages guarantees a further UEFA payout of at least £5.8m (making the running total £7.5m), again plus TV and gate receipts from three home games – perhaps another £1m to £2m. That’s a minimum, based on the assumption Motherwell lost all six group games – they’d make an extra £320,000 for any game they managed to draw, and £640,000 for any they won.

(Assuming they failed to qualify from the group stages, they could still be parachuted into the Europa League for finishing 3rd, which would provide the chance to additionally pull in a similar sum to that Aberdeen collected in 2008.)

The total potential value to Motherwell of a single season’s Champions League qualification, then, applying realistic projections to their chances of progress – that is, winning just two qualifying-round ties against distinctly mediocre opposition and then being thumped in the group stages – is in the region of £10 million. That’s more than a decade’s-worth of the projected losses from the absence of Rangers in the domestic game. Even a very modest achievement in the Europa League would be worth about four to five seasons of Rangers games.

(Which in itself assumes Motherwell get two home games against Rangers each season. In half of the seasons of the SPL the Fir Park outfit has failed to reach the top six, which risks losing 50% of their ties vs the Ibrox men.)

So the good people of the Well Society face a pretty straight choice: either admit Sevco Rangers to the SPL, wave goodbye to any realistic chance of participation in the Champions League and see their club die a slow, miserable death from falling crowds and the league’s inbuilt financial inequities (which are likely to be modified but not revolutionised by any conditions attached to the acceptance of Rangers), or dare to dream of a brighter future brought about by the dizzyingly lucrative sums generated from an extremely-achievable increased frequency of European qualification.

(Bearing in mind also, of course, that success breeds success – the sort of money provided by the Champions League enables a better playing squad and/or expanded stadium capacity, all the better to accommodate the larger crowds which would turn up to watch such a team.)

We hope that someone has the courtesy to at least supply them with both sides of the equation before they make their minds up.