£5M for Rangers as UK record is broken with new deal | OneFootball

Rangers yesterday announced improved terms on the Kindred deal, aka shirt sponsorship, with Unibet and 32Red now committing further to the club in what amounts to the longest-lasting sponsorship of this kind in the UK, going back now to 2014.

Rangers have shown stunning loyalty to the Kindred group, whose (at the time modest value) sponsorship began when Rangers were mired in the lower divisions, and the gambling company have rewarded that loyalty by upping the value of the contract to continue the relationship.

Back in 2021 the yearly value was £1.5M, and that has been increased to around £2.5M, with performances (particularly Europe) bonuses taking it into the region of £3M.

This is not devastating numbers per se, but it is in line with what ‘them lot’ across the city get with Dafabet, so this is more or less what either Old Firm can command for the logo on their jersey.

The further deal added to the pot is Elior, the club’s official catering partner, itself worth around £2M a year.

The biggest coup here? It’s the fact that cash-rich Celtic themselves get around £3M a year for their shirt deal and Rangers are now closer in line with that.

For all the off-pitch and indeed on-pitch stuff that hasn’t been going great the past while, Rangers’ challenge is to match/go past Celtic, and this shirt deal now more or less equals them in that department.

It’s definitely a step in the right direction.

In pure numbers, both new deals, both Elior and Kindred, are record deals for Rangers, amounting to £5M potential per year. That’s cash not to sniff at and suggests while new Commercial Director Karim Virani was ‘a little slow’ to truly get going, his position is now bearing similar to fruit to what predecessor James Bisgrove did, and he’s getting good deals.

It’s a healthy spine for the club, to have two major sponsorships bringing in big cash, and while it won’t let us sign Erling Haaland any time soon, it gives a grounding for future strong deals to surface.

We definitely will want more of this!