Rangers and Sports Direct’s stadium renaming deal

RANGERS have struck an agreement to sell their stadium naming rights to retailer Sports Direct, chief executive Charles Green has announced.

• Rangers’ Charles Green announces stadium deal has been struck

• Chief executive hopes to formalise deal by start of next season

The club hope to have the deal ready before the start of next season, and will have digital mock-ups of what the renamed stadium may look like on their official website.

Mike Ashley, who owns Sports Direct and Newcastle United, owns a stake in Rangers International Football Club plc, and already has a deal in place via Sports Direct with the club as a merchandising supplier.

After posting their financial performance for the second half of 2012, during which the club made a £7 million loss, Green said that Sports Direct representatives had visited the club, and that Newcastle United managing director Derek Llambas had talked up the benefits of the deal.

“We have now decided that Sports Direct will be the partner (for stadium naming),” Green told STV.

“We had representatives from Sports Direct up for a fans’ forum a couple of weeks ago. We also had Derek Llambias of Newcastle United sharing his experience of how that helped his club.

“We are now into the stage where we are doing some layouts, some pictorials of how it might look and we’ll stick those on the website shortly so the fans can see what’s being proposed.

“We have had good engagement from the fans on this. I think it was always an issue for fans but I think the fans accept now that this is something that we have to do. Almost all of the big stadia have been named now.”