Rangers left red-faced after latest kit drama unfolds

While orders of kits appeared to be well underway there was a new possible twist to the Castore and Sports Direct exclusive rights for Rangers kit appearing today.

We saw confusion and outrage during the week when Sports Direct popped up with promotional material online declaring that they had exclusive sales rights from 1 August. Rangers fans had a meltdown and yes, there was a club statement. Amazingly, that statement tried to pass this news of Mike Ashley’s groups involvement as perfectly normal, between Castore and Sports Direct, but without even mentioning the name of Sports Direct at all. Quite remarkable!

That was followed by a report in the Scottish Sun covering comments by Castore boss Tom Behan, one of the two brothers who founded the firm.

He explained that Sports Direct gave up their legal rights over Rangers kits and that they definitely do not have an exclusive deal. Castore, he said, could make arrangements to supply other high street retailers across the UK.

"“Under our direct partnership between Castore and Rangers, Sports Direct, as well as several other third party retailers, will have the option to purchase from Castore and then the ability to sell Rangers products.“That is the situation.”"

How odd then that Sports Direct claimed exclusive rights. It’s not a word that you’d expect to be used by them in error and you’d expect a business with huge experience in kit deals, merchandise and retailing to understand the deals it makes, in great detail. Every word, sentence and clause having a clear meaning to them.

In fact that’s evident by the example of the clauses in their last deals with the Ibrox club which turned out to have all manner of exclusive rights, deals and opportunities the less experienced board at Rangers seemed unaware of.

So again, exclusivity surely wouldn’t come lightly or as a surprise to Sports Direct, even if turned out to be a shock to others.

Journalist Phil MacGiollabhain asked a contact he has about the Sports Direct Facebook post and references in his blog:

"I finally caught up with a Shirebrook source today, and he was somewhat coy about the whole affair. However, he did say is that the Facebook post wasn’t a mistake; rather, it was:“A gentle reminder to all of the parties about the realities of the deal”."

Today visitors to the preorder site for Rangers kit are greeted not by all the kit that was available,  but instead by only a holding page which has nothing other than a message saying there will be a new website from 1 August and offering the chance to register for it.

Again, how odd. All the preorder kit has seemingly been taken down, removed, no longer available online at that site.  Perhaps the limited 50,000 items have all been sold, but you’d still expect to see more than a blank page. Perhaps as a minimum some form of explanatory message and ongoing promotion.  And why would it happen right at this point of an important kit launch, it is surely a very strange time to take down a site for almost a month to relaunch it.

No doubt there is a perfectly plausible explanation to who has exclusive rights and to why the site looks so empty. Perhaps we should await or expect another statement.

In the meantime Celtic fans continue to be delighted by the new Adidas range launched this week and orders look to be flying high.