Rangers have made no secret of the fact that they want to become a club that is self-sufficient and the latest publication from UEFA suggests that a solid foundation is being built.
Since 2015, tens of millions of pounds have been put into the club by the board to rebuild a sub-standard squad and repair and regenerate a battered and bruised stadium.
Now, the plan is for Rangers to the next level with a fully functioning player trading model that will go hand in hand with revenue made from competing in Europe and a packed home ground – a UEFA report revealing just how much we are making out of fans attending Ibrox.
Rangers riding high on UEFA money list
The UEFA Intelligence Centre published a report this week that consolidates all the financial results of every member club and nation, ranking them in seven key areas.
Surprisingly, Rangers make the top 20 in gate revenue growth and sit one place above Celtic in 18th place despite not making the knockout stages of any European competition for the reporting period.
For perspective, we dropped five places from our Europa League final run of 201/22 but only lost £2m in terms of total income despite playing fewer games.
The figures, for those interested, were £41.9m for ‘21/22 to £39.9m for ‘22/23, highlighting again what qualifying for the Champions League can do for the bank balance.
It can’t be downplayed how impressive this is given how many teams there are from the Premier League, Serie A and La Liga that sit below us in the table.
UEFA explaining why we have such a lofty position:
“This list of the top 20 clubs features many of the usual suspects, but the large supporter bases of Olympique de Marseille, Rangers FC, Celtic FC and AFC Ajax have propelled those clubs into the list.”
This campaign is looking good to make a similar sort of sum and it will be needed with Celtic banking the Champions League cash again.
The Europa League might not be where the big money is in terms of TV revenue, however, a 50,000-seater stadium being full on another couple of occasions at £50 a head isn’t to be sniffed at.
What it shows is that we can compete with the big boys in some areas, although it might be some time before we are paying six-figure weekly salaries and nine-figure transfer fees.
Bosmans and the odd £4m transfer will have to do, for now.
