John Paul, one of my commenters, was kind enough to send me the link to the article below. As it is a specialist IP blog, I decided that reproducing the entire post without consent would be asking for trouble!
I have therefore posted the first two paras, and you can see the rest of the piece by clicking on the title below.
It is a very interesting piece, written from well outside the West of Scotland bubble, and all the better for that.
Off to The IPKat you all should go.
Would the value of the Rangers FC brand be improved by a move to England?
The news that Rangers FC, a famous old Scottish football club, would be liquidated caused a shock in the world of sport. Here was a sporting institution, founded in 1872 and league champions a record 54 times, being dissolved forever… at least in the legal sense. The goodwill and the brand, if not the club, will undoubtedly live on. However, this Kat wonders whether rebranding an English football club as Rangers FC and playing in the English league would bring greater fortune for the brand, or kill it altogether.
As with the assets of most companies in administration, the trade mark rights relating to Rangers FC, have reportedly been sold on to a ‘newco’. Although this phoenix club will play under the Rangers badge next season, the right to play in the Scottish Premier League has been forfeited. The newly-formed club, whose predecessor had an average attendance of around 45,000 spectators per match last season, will begin next season in the fourth tier of Scottish football; an exiled king banished to suffer the ignominy of playing in front of one man and his dog (or should that be Kat?).
Now, click on the heading above to read the rest of this excellent piece.
Random Thoughts Re Scots Law by Paul McConville 
A fascinating piece that proves D&P aren’t entirely stoopid!
I had pondered on why the administrators had priced the value of the Ibrox Faithful at £1 as it seemed ludicrously low and in previous accounts had been £620,000.
Kat’s piece was illuminating on the issue of Goodwill and it seems D&P had come to the same conclusion that there was no guarantee that the oldco support would actually transfer its allegiance to SevGers,
And it appears that is the problem being experienced.
Stats from last year 46,000 average home gate, so why then do only about 8,000 of those feel the urge to Follow, Follow down to Kilmarnock or Motherwell which are both within easy commuting from Ibrox. Clearly the vast majority (and the same applies to Celtic) would not entertain a move. But if they are in the same ground bla bla bla then the fans can delude themselves that Sevco is an anagram of Rangers.
are you scottish?
tickert allocations, heard of those? got to let some of the home fans in, you know.
what a strange comment.
away ticket allocations usually/always pals in comparison to the home ticket, hence why sometimes stadium are still half empty even thou the away sells out, Some teams playing at home would rather it be a half house, then one full of the away fans. It’d feel like playing away, even thou its at home.
Also especially in light of the racist/bigotry issues that sounds Ger fans(Celtic included). Only the fans that have the away tickets end up traveling.
i’m still trying to work out what a tickert is…
sevco or bibs ,just would not fit in in england englands working class are anti racist and are trying to combat minority eliments of thugs and have done so and addressed the situation well the last thing they would want is sevco knuggle graggers look what they did in manchester there in shook at that still maybe 20 years ago they might have theres to much ugly baggage with sev,bib and no country as cosmipolitian as england would want them its a nono ,sevco are a stain on the union jack and cant see they are not what britian stands for englands a quarter irish a quarter jamician a quarter orential and aquarter of other continants of the world it the greatest example of universialism you could ever find ,they are diverse and tolerant and celerbrate muilti cultureism to the max ,there is still a very small minority that are knuggledraggers ,sevco would not fit in in these enviroments and the english no this the scottish goverment are to blame for sevcos atitude and should have done more to try to get them to adopt universial millenium atitudes rather than turn a blind eye ,the world has changed people dont care what school you went to or what faith you are down south they take people as they are and they dont judge a book by its cover sevco have no place apart from the history books ,a feel its ozymandias time for them its just the way it gos and personally its good ridence to bad rubbish the majority of rangers fans turned a blind eye to the bile so a feel no sympathy for any of them its as simple as that england just got ride of a bad soccer image taking rangers on board would just create a new 1 ,they have to face up to reaility that no 1 likes them why do they care now ??its games a boggie due to bulling scotland and cheating the nations small clubs for years and ruining our national team with finacial doping
kind regards mick unrepentant muliticultureist with a loving universial atitude always first to high light a world with out frontiers is a free world
Mick, afraid you’re a bit overly optimistic about England. Have lived down here for 25 or so years now – definitely progress, but what we might call the “John Terry Tendency” is certainly not dead. There’s a fair amount of self-righteous guff when an England player is racially abused abroad, but the same people turn a blind eye to what goes on week in, week out in Premiership and the Football League.
john terrys types are beginnig to look at them selfs in the mirror one incedent should not take away all the work of show racism the red card and countless other groups
a spent a lot of my young years in brixton luck for me ave irish london familiy it doesnt matter what you are as long as you good thats what counts and thats why they would not fit in am sure you agree with my point on a whole thou
Indeed yes, agree with your main point. Also certainly the case that people in England would look on the sectarianism in Glasgow with utter bafflement.
@ADM
Never mind England, decent people in Glasgow look on in bafflement and avoid football matches where it is practiced like the plague. I wonder how many bums on seats especially of women and youngsters and cool guys that this costs to the game?
there either going to the history books or the lower tier of the sfl so we dont get embarassed any more with them and scotland can move on from the bullying and cliamits place as a great diverse nation what the whole of scotland wants were feed up with greasy pies we want chillie ones if you mentioned the word positivity at ibrokes they would think your homo thats how numb there mantality is
Even a quid of goodwill is too much … goodwill is the difference between purchase price of a business and the value of its assets (in double entry accounting the remaining debit has to go somewhere !!!).
Sevco “bought” (in the loosest sense of the word … I can think of a few more appropriate expressions) the assets not the business hence there can be no goodwill. Other intangible assets such .
@SPORTSFANNZ
Well, you learn something every day. Does that mean the history is regarded as an asset – I reckon that it couldn’t be classed intangible as it is clearly more akin to a lead lifebelt in some respects.
Yes, history is an asset, especially if it is deemed to include such moveable assets as the contents of the Ibrox trophy room.
Sorry, but Sevco bought the history, the brand, and the goodwill. All of which are assets. The £1 value placed on goodwill is a red herring IMHO, as it will be done to minimise tax.
oops missed last bit.
Other intangible assets such as brand etc are disclosed separately from goodwill.
This is VERY much off-topic, but I see that at Hampden this evening the flag of SOUTH Korea was displayed whilst NORTH Korea was playing! Now, don’t misunderstand me – N Korea aint a nice place! However, I’m wondering who might have been responsible for the cock-up! I keep thinking of the CEs of the SPL, the SFA, the SLF, etc.! However, I may be wrong here! Miind you, just how much intelligence does one need to get a flag right!!
The flag mess up was all down to the London 2012 organisers who have co-ordinated all the protocol stuff. That was only the first day. Just wait ’till the fun really begins.
The other side of the Goodwill entry is Reserves which are below the line, beside Capital. It is then amortised over a reasonable period rather than being left as it was many years ago at cost in the Balance Sheet.
A reasonable time using Green-speak would be 24 hours or 7 days both of which seem to be an indefinite measure of time when he uses them.
Super should push for some Goodwill as he seems to be claiming a shortage of Reserves !!
I’m with ADM on this – I’m also down in England 25+ years (did we come down on the same bus?), and I also believe there are LOADS of racist fans, and at every club.
As far as ‘branding’ goes, the marketing boys would have to think up a completely new image for Rangers, because from the image they’ve projected for decades down here (and OK, it’s maybe not ALL their fault), I’d say they’d attract the NF/BNP types and a heavily anti-Catholic support, among others.
But the main problem with them going to England is that I doubt anyone would want them (bams aside), particularly with their travelling support’s CV. Even the fact that they would attract the type of Englishmen (and a few women) outlined above would put the kybosh on any move – not least on public order grounds.
Really interesting article though – clearly argued, intelligently put together for what must have been a bummer of a brief (and many thanks for getting hold of it JP). It actually took me a while to suss out IP was Intellectual Property (it’s also Internet Protocol), but it must be one of the first times that ‘intellectual’ ANYTHING has been addressed throughout this whole farce.
One last point on branding that might interest some of you. A old mate of mine, who is Celtic daft, used to work in IT/marketing with Sony BNG in London. He told me that, according to those who keep tabs on that sort of stuff (the same guys that now check who’s ‘trending’ on Twitter, etc), on the days leading up to the Seville Uefa Cup Final vs Porto, Celtic became one of the leading ‘brands’ in the world – this relating to the ‘buzz’ the club and its supporters created.
On top of that, my friend told me one of the main indicators that the branding gurus used was that Celtic fans accounted for around 1% of ALL air travellers in the 24hrs leading up to the game. Good eh?
I think I can safely say that those guys would have no problem ‘branding’ the other half of the Old Firm in England – or anywhere else for that matter.
A very good friend actually drove me down with all my kit and a couple of boxes of books in August 1986 – so no bus for me! More relevantly, definitely agree with you that, while IPKat’s article is interesting, it’s entirely hypothetical – there’s no way any league in England would touch Rangers with a bargepole.
@Kenny McCaffrey
You jogged a memory cell about Rangers and their history when it comes to fascism – a bit of the history that has been airbrushed.
A small group of NF/BNP Bluenoses led by a Rangers supporter wanted to build an alliance with like-minded southern cretins and organised a meeting in Glasgow with Ibrox bears and English fascists to form the original steering committee.
I was told the story by a journo I know a long time ago – he had apparently infiltrated the meeting and said he has never figured out how he wasn’t rumbled as the tears of supressed laughter had ran down his cheeks.
I think it was Tyndal he said did the warm-up and he launched into an attack on Jews – apparently this caused a lot of rumbling in the audience with quite a few pointing out that a lot of Jews supported the Gers and were also memners of the same Masonic Lodges.
Tyndal seemingly cast about for another hook and decided on the blacks – and my mate said this nearly erupted in a riot with the Orange Contingent going mental about their black Orange brothers who held Orange Parades in various African countries – I think he told me which ones but I forget but obviously there must be a colonial connection. Result was that the meeting broke-up in disarray. But seemingly it was the full bhoona with regalia, King Billy & Boyne Banners and Ornage Lodges. It sounds fantasy but my mate swears it was true – one wonders what the non-orange local population made of it all – the answer to that is probably pretty close to what the same grouping think in Glasgow.
The meeting organisers apparently made other attempts to build an Alliance of Hate but apparently the Bears weren’t interested and what might have become a very nasty part of Rangers’ history has thankfully, thanks to decent fans and other fans abiding to their own traditional hatred, has been relegated to a tiny footnote.
If Tyndal had been better prepared and played the religious card then things may well have been different but then I’m not sure as Scots through time and all over the world are happy enough to knock lumps out of each other but quick to unite to repel foreign boarders.
Sorry if I’ve got this wrong, I’m still half asleep, but branding? Ali McCoist has been complaining about too much punishment for Rangers but branding? Surely that’s going just a bit too far.
Ok can we have Rangers re branding Portsmouth, looks like thay are available.
We could have – Portglasgow Rangers – no, that would be confusing.
How about – Rangersmouth – no, to much bile likely to come from that.
I’m open to better and funnier ideas 🙂
Why keep talking about a club that died come on get over it there gone whatever the new mob might want to think dead dead get over it please we want a new start to football in scotland long live celts