A finance expert sees one clear reason Celtic are rolling in cash while Rangers continue to lose it
Celtic Interim Manager Martin O’Neill shakes hands with Rangers Head Coach Danny Rohl(Image: SNS Group)
There’s a £265m gap between Celtic and Rangers over the last decade – and it’s the main reason the Premiership champions have left their rivals in the dust financially, according to one of Manchester City’s former financial advisers.
We’re in an unusual period of Scottish football where both of the Glasgow giants find themselves in a state of crisis for different reasons. At Rangers, the initial investment from the US consortium led by chairman Andrew Cavenagh and the San Francisco 49ers has been a disaster. We’re not even six months on from the announcement and we’ve already seen one of the worst transfer windows in their history, and a manager, sporting director and CEO have all come and gone.
But it’s not exactly all rosy at Celtic either. While Martin O’Neill has steadied the ship on the pitch, the fans are in revolt at what’s happening off it, accusing the board of hoarding cash and costing them a place in the Champions League. Their accounts are swelling with cash but punters want to see it spent and their recent AGM descended into chaos which caused chairman Peter Lawwell to end it early.
Fans have regularly called for the impressive funds they’re able to raise through player sales to be reinvested into the squad and finance expert Stefan Borson has gone through the accounts and crunched the numbers. Over the last 10 years, he reckons the Hoops have made £150m more than they’ve spent in the transfer market.
That’s a problem in the eyes of many punters, but it’s the opposite one facing Rangers – who Borson says have LOST £115m by the same metric.
The £10.4m sale of Hamza Igamane in the summer was a step in the right direction but that was their first sale north of £10m since Calvin Bassey’s exit for Ajax in the summer of 2022. And Borson told Football Insider: “Rangers are not making anywhere near enough money on player sales.
“The club consistently loses money. Most clubs do. The gap is not good with Celtic. Now, whether that’s about performance financially or player sales, the trend is awful. If you look at it on a profit basis, year on year the gap between Celtic and Rangers is getting more significant each year.
Football finance expert Stefan Borson appears on talkSPORT(Image: talkSPORT)
“On a 10-year basis, there’s a (more than) £250m difference. Over 10 years, Celtic have made the best part of £150m and Rangers have lost the best part of £115m, so there’s this £250m difference. That obviously is a big issue because it compounds over time.”
Borson also pored over Rangers’ most recent accounts and reckons there is reason to be cautiously optimistic. Despite their eye-catching £15m loss, he reckons a rise in commercial revenue points things may be trending in the right direction – if they can finally start selling players for a profit.
He continued: “So much of the numbers and the difference between the two clubs comes down to what you’re doing in Uefa competition. Rangers in terms of the sort of headline wasn’t a bad season. Turnover wise, it was up 7 per cent. Gate receipts were broadly in line. Broadcast was broadly in line, so they drove actually quite a substantial increase in commercial revenue.
“On the face of it, it wasn’t a terrible performance. Look, Rangers are clearly in a difficult position right now, and it’s just going to take time for it to wash through.”