Rangers Money

Rangers Money
Financial rewards systems are nothing new,but Rangers FC are looking to extend their scheme to tackle even larger markets.
Football fans are among the most loyal of any sport, and this remains especially true north of the border. So it’s a logical step for the commercial teams at top-flight clubs to investigate new ways they can make capital from such loyalty and provide fans with a genuinely useful service at the same time. This, in essence, is how Rangers Money was born.
The scheme kicked off only a couple of months ago, in March 2008, and its ethos is simple. Rangers Money will offer Rangers supporters exclusive financial advice on a full range of products from mortgages to pensions. However, there’s a nifty trick to the plans. Part of the revenue for any financial services product purchased through Rangers Money will go directly back to Rangers for the benefit of the club. And that’s where playing the loyalty hand comes in.
Matt Smith works for Rangers Commercial, and he’s in no doubt over the value that such products add to the club, supporters and the relationship between the two.
“From our side, historically we’ve had branded club products. So technically there’s no reason not to do the same with club products to do with money, so looking at elements like mortgages or loans. In the past we’ve had a direct group of advisors that we’d work with on an affinity level. To be honest, in many ways that didn’t work too well, in fact the only example I can really think of that illustrates success in that particular way is MU finance,” explains Smith.
Given this situation, it seemed an alternative approach was required. So, much in the way managers opt for substitutions to carry them through the trickier sides of a fixture, AEGON were brought in.
There’s good reason to trust AEGON. The company has assets totalling some £52.3 billion, with around 4,000 staff. In today’s uncertain financial climate, these are reassuring figures.
“I think that perhaps the next step could be to create a kind of smart-card technology. So you’d have a season-ticket holder, but rather than offering them a book of tickets, they’d be given a card as an alternative. That way we are aware when they access the stadium and we can tailor that situation to create a loyalty card. Perhaps you’d receive a redeemable point for every home game, and then you can use these in the megastore or the kiosk, maybe 200 points could win you a piece of merchandise or a lunch with the manager. In the wider financial sense there’s a very logical approach to these kind of steps, and we’re looking to progress them.”
Again, such ideas capitalise on the willingness of fans to invest financially in something that has a genuine emotional meaning to them. For these schemes to work, there’s a need to balance the benefits available from fans with effective valuable services to them. There’s little more terrifying than an outraged stand chanting for the downfall of a manager over financial mismanagement of a football club. But it appears Rangers have all the bases covered, and with their recent foray into the European Cup reaping even greater financial rewards, things are beginning to look really rosy at Ibrox. PSB