Rangers administration: Paul Murray has good reason to join forces with Ticketus

But while the identity of his partners sheds new light on the development of the consortium, it is the link-up announced last week with Ticketus, the firm at the centre of a deal with Rangers’ biggest shareholder, Craig Whyte, that could carry the greatest significance.

Ticketus advanced Whyte £24million in exchange for the income from future season tickets. There is an argument about whether Rangers or Whyte himself are liable for that sum, with one body of opinion suggesting that the club may not owe the firm a penny.

Rather than go down that route of defying Ticketus, however, Murray has opted to take them on board as part of his business plan for the takeover of Rangers. In so doing, he aims not only to avoid costly and potentially lengthy legal action, but also to secure a sizeable percentage of the funding he needs for his takeover to proceed successfully. Under Murray’s plan, Ticketus will play three different roles in the consortium.

First, it will provide some of the funding for the Blue Knights’ purchase of Rangers. Second, it will ensure the new owners have enough cash to keep the business going until a share issue can generate new funds. And third, the terms of its season-ticket deal will be revised, to become less onerous to Rangers.

Murray has not specified the sum he and his colleagues are willing to pay for Rangers, or the amount which will be forwarded by Ticketus. But the London-based company’s balance sheet will be a major asset in the bid. Similarly, administrators Duff & Phelps need to be convinced that any new owners will have enough money to fund Rangers as a going concern - and there, too, Ticketus have an obvious role to play. Those two aspects of Murray’s plan are clear-cut, but the third is more arguable. If, as has been suggested, Ticketus may be due nothing from Rangers, why make a deal that could see the firm profit by several million pounds? The answer, quite simply, is that Murray thinks Rangers will also be the beneficiaries thanks to the overall deal. In other words, without being assured of getting at least some of their money back, Ticketus would be a whole lot less willing to go ahead with the first two parts of Murray’s three-part plan. And without those first two parts, the plan would be a lot less likely to succeed.

Although they entered into the deal with Whyte in good faith, Ticketus have been tainted by association with the shareholder in the eyes of many Rangers supporters. Their involvement with Murray is a tangible sign of their goodwill towards the club, and should therefore repair at least some of that damage to their reputation.

For those supporters who remain extremely unhappy with Ticketus, the thought of not buying future season tickets could arise. But, according to football finance expert Neil Patey of Ernst & Young, such a course of action would only hurt the club.

“If the agreement between Ticketus and Whyte were found to be legally binding on Rangers, supporters would not be able to exert pressure on Ticketus by declining to buy season tickets,” Patey said yesterday. And the same thing would apply if and when Murray, on behalf of Rangers, concluded a deal with Ticketus which acknowledged liability. “Rangers would still owe Ticketus exactly the same amount, and would simply have been denied a source of revenue to help repay that debt.”

Another advantage of that agreement between Murray and Ticketus, as Patey pointed out, is that as potential joint owners of Rangers they would not be creditors under the terms of a Company Voluntary Arrangement (CVA), the vehicle required to take a business out of administration.

“If Ticketus are owed money by Rangers. under a CVA they would waive their right to that money. If they were deemed to be creditors of Craig Whyte’s, they would have nothing to waive under a CVA.”

With Ticketus out of the way as far as a CVA was concerned, HMRC would emerge as the major creditors whose agreement was required. This would be the case no matter the outcome of the first-tier tax tribunal which could land Rangers with a bill for £49m, as even if that tribunal finds in the club’s favour, a bill for almost £15m arising from Whyte’s stewardship would remain to be dealt with.

“The administrators would have to do a deal with the Revenue first,” Patey added. “You cannot have that potential debt hanging over the club. The administrators would have to bring HMRC on board and ask ‘Do you sign up to the CVA or not?’ If and when they reached agreement, they would then say to Paul Murray what the structure of the CVA was.”

It would then be up to Murray and his colleagues to accept those terms or not. And with Ticketus on his side, he would be a lot more able to accept them.