SPFL chairman Murdoch MacLennan is on the board of the Competition and Markets Authority, the same organisation that issued a recent price-fixing fine to Rangers.
The Ibrox side have been fined alongside Elite Sports and JD Sports for fixing the retail price of the club’s home kit back in 2018.
Whilst Rangers’ involvement in the situation – which kept the price of the kit high and is said to have unfairly manipulated the market – was only across two months and subsequently only £225k of the total £2m fined, the situation has been thoroughly embarrassing for all involved.
But the revelation that MacLennan is on the board of the organisation will be interesting to Rangers with the Ibrox side engaged in a series of high-profile disputes with the SPFL.
The most recent of these involves the new Sky TV deal, with the SPFL forcing through a rule change in order to circumvent Rangers’ abstinence from the vote, with the Ibrox side said to be demanding an apology for the professional members’ body’s handling of the cinch sponsorship dispute.
Rangers had been vindicated in their opposition to the cinch deal due to a clash of commercial interest with Park’s Motor Group, with the Ibrox club now set to benefit financially from the deal despite not taking part in it.
This is before we talk about the infamous 2020 end-of-season vote, which saw Celtic awarded a title they technically did not win.
Murdoch MacLennan a director at Rangers fining CMA
As you can see on the CMA website, Murdoch MacLennan sits on the organisation’s board as a non-executive board member.
MacLennan is also Chair of the Office for the Internal Market and is clearly an influential presence at the top of the CMA.
Whilst we are not alledging any wrongdoing and merely pointing this out it’s also interesting to note historic issues which have been reported between Rangers and Murdoch MacLennan.
In 2018, Rangers called for Murdoch MacLennan to resign from his post as SPFL chairman after he became a non-executive chairman at Dublin-based Independent News and Media (INM).
INM is owned by Celtic owner Dermot Desmond, leading Rangers to cite a “conflict of interest” as a result.
MacLennan was also accused by satirical magazine Private Eye as having a serious problem with Rangers.
The magazine branded MacLennan as “shifty” and claimed that the SPFL chairman “hates Rangers”, quoting him as saying he “cannae stand” the club’s supporters.
At the time of writing, Rangers are also yet to make comment on the outcome of the CMA investigation and subsequent fine.
