Rangers are all but set to miss out on Champions League football next season after their loss to Hearts in the Scottish Premiership.
Losing 2-1 to Hearts meant that the Light Blues are now seven points behind Hearts in the SPFL table.
In order to qualify for the Champions League, the Ibrox outfit need to win the league, and for that, they need Celtic and Hearts to regularly drop points in the remaining three games while also winning their respective fixtures.
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Rangers face a complicated path to the Europa League next season, let alone the Champions League.
They are relying on Celtic to win the Scottish Cup, or they could be playing in the Conference League.
Adam Williams, GRV Media’s Head of Finance and Governance Content, claims that some clubs do not benefit from the Champions League unless they go into the deeper stages of the competition due to the various bonuses included in players’ contracts.
He told Rangers News exclusively: “The pathway to European football is complex these days. Rangers, at present, would need to win two ties to get to the Europa League, assuming Celtic win the Scottish Cup.
“If they fail there or Dunfermline win the Scottish Cup, it’s the Conference League qualifying rounds.
“The difference between the Champions League and the Europa League is night and day. Then there is another cliff edge between the Europa and the Conference League.
“For some clubs, you don’t actually make a profit in the Conference League unless you go deep into that competition. Why? Because you have to pay player bonuses, matchday costs and so on, and they can easily outweigh prize money. In the Europa League, your margin is better.“
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While missing out on the Champions League would be tough to swallow for the club in terms of their finances, their transfer budgets are likely to be allocated prior to the start of the season.
Scottish teams have historically needed to go through the qualifiers and have failed to make it to the league or group stage of the Champions League.
The same could have happened for Rangers, so Andrew Cavenagh and co. are expected to sanction the same amount of money as they were planning to a few weeks ago.
Williams continued: “It’s difficult to say precisely what the difference between Champions League and the other two competitions is because you can only really do that analysis at the end of a European campaign, when prize money is locked in.
“In terms of the budget, the caveat here is that they themselves won’t know until they are a few weeks into next season what competition, if any, they are going to be in. That makes it difficult to really recalibrate your budget.
“However, I suspect that they have their budget and a number that they want to recoup from sales in mind, regardless of where they are, and the recent capital injections from the owners mean that they have very healthy cash reserves to absorb any financial losses they make from being in a more junior UEFA competition.
“So, yes, we’ll see sales this summer, but they will have been planned well in advance. I don’t think, at this stage under the new owners, that the absence of Champions League football will be the key driver here.“
