Kieran Maguire: Rangers chiefs won’t budge amid ‘highly volatile’ official talks update
Rangers will continue to focus on their own NFT deal rather than bow to pressure to join the new league-wide sponsor partnership.
That is the view of finance guru Kieran Maguire, speaking exclusively to Football Insider about the SPFL’s new deal with NFT firm Sorare.
Scottish clubs will lend their branding to a what amounts to a virtual trading card game as part of the deal which signed earlier this month.
But per The Scottish Sun on Wednesday (20 April), Rangers will not participate because of pre-existing commitments with crypto platform Bitci.
Sorare revealed they were in talks to “onboard Rangers as soon as we can” in an update posted via Twitter later that day.
But Maguire claims that SPFL-branded NFTs, which he describes as “highly volatile”, will sell fine without Rangers.
“Rangers are a big player in Scottish football,” he told Football Insider‘s Adam Williams.
“They would enhance the value of any deal. But it is unlikely that followers of other clubs would buy NFTs, so I don’t think they will be a huge loss.
“They can now focus on their own revenue from their own NFT partnership.
“However, there is pushback from fans over these unregulated, highly volatile and easily manipulated assets.“
Commercial income accounted for £10.7million of Rangers’ £47.7m turnover in 2020-21.
The Glasgow giants beat Motherwell 3-1 yesterday (23 April) and are next face RB Leipzig in the Europa League semi-final next Thursday (28 April).
In other news, Celtic and Rangers set for “unfair” treatment as “bizarre” development confirmed.