Rangers could be taking West Ham on in a pre-season friendly on 26 July at Ibrox.
The Light Blues are set for a host of games ahead of the new season as the first-team squad will be looking to get back their match sharpness come August.
Rangers are unlikely to be facing Coventry City, despite recent reports, and could instead be playing host to the recently relegated Premier League side.
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Rangers could pocket £1.5m from the West Ham friendly
Adam Williams, GRV Media’s Head of Finance and Governance content, claims that the Gers will be making £1.5m from the pre-season friendly despite offering discounted tickets for the game.
That is because the club will be making money from season ticket holders, who otherwise would not have bought tickets.
Also, if they do not hire a promoter for the game, they could keep more of the gate receipts or potentially share some of it with West Ham.
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Williams told Rangers News: “From the outside, it seems quite late in the day to be organising pre-season friendlies, but we’ll give the benefit of the doubt to Rangers because of complications with the World Cup and so on.
“If they play West Ham, they’ll either arrange it club-to-club or go through a promoter, who’ll organise the logistics, market the match and so on. If they arrange it themselves, they’ll either give a cut of the gate receipts to West Ham or pay a flat fee. If they go through a promoter, the promoter usually pays a flat fee to both clubs and Rangers will get extra for use of the stadium. The contracts involved are more complex than that, with different arrangements for sponsorship and so on, but that’s the nub and gist.
“Any match against English opposition will get a good turnout, from both the home and away contingent. Rangers’ average yield per match is about £1.5m. For a friendly, ticket prices will be lower than for a competitive game, but that’s probably offset to an extent because season ticket holders need to buy a ticket for it if they want to attend.”
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Williams also added that, as the players will be wearing the new jerseys for the first time, it may encourage fans to purchase the kits as well.
The £1.5m fee mentioned is the revenue and not exactly the profit, which would be closer to the £1m mark.
That is still a seven-figure windfall, which is still decent money given that Rangers will not be playing in the Champions League next season.
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Williams continued: “I’d say that £1.5m revenue figure is probably about right. You also get the chance to sell shirts, given that it will be one of the first times that they’ll have worn the new season’s wear, plus maybe some activations with sponsors etc.
“That’s not all profit, mind. There are considerable costs involved with staging a game, plus VAT and your fee to West Ham and so on.
“It’s much harder to quantify the profit because clubs don’t break down their operational expenses granularly, but I think you can probably knock off, say, £500k all told. So you’re probably still in seven-figure territory, if you get a good attendance – and that’s the key thing.”
