Scottish soccer giants Rangers have announced a record renewal of their long-running front-of-shirt sponsorship deal with sports betting’s Kindred Group.
The partnership, first agreed ahead of the 2014-15 season, will now run through the end of the 2028-29 Scottish Premiership campaign, with Kindred’s Unibet brand taking over front-of-shirt branding.
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32Red, the Kindred Group betting brand that had previously adorned Rangers’ kits, will now instead cover the club’s training kits and warm up attire.
Speaking on the deal, Rangers chief commercial officer Karim Virani stated: “This partnership is the longest running of its kind in British football – and has helped the club enormously over what will be 15 years at the end of the deal we’ve announced today.”
Kindred will also continue to support the Rangers Charity Foundation in its men’s mental health Team Talk initiative.
The deals’ annual value up to this point was reported to be around $1.5 million per year (though could be as high as $1.8 million), with reports suggesting that the latest renewal will see an uplift of as much as 80% on that tally, and that further bonus could bring that uplift to 93%, making it the most lucrative front of shirt deal in the club’s 152-year history.
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By GlobalDataKindred’s partnership with Rangers is the longest such unbroken deal in UK soccer, which perhaps best highlights the lack of true global and commercial interest in Scottish soccer at the present, in regard to global popularity, and as such the lack of new entries into its sponsorship mix.
Without the same level of global appeal that other major soccer leagues boast, there is not the same level of brand interest in main sponsorship deals, despite Rangers’ consistent knockout stage qualification in European soccer’s secondary Europa League (four of the last five seasons).
Whilst teams like French giants PSG are able to leverage their European success to attract big foreign based investment against the declining trend in French soccer, Rangers cannot and continue to turn to the gambling industry to enhance their annual income from shirt sponsors.
Rangers' 2024-25 Europa League campaign will begin on September 19 against Malmo in the first of eight group stage fixtures in the competition with high profile opponents such as Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur still to come.
Although a long-term shirt sponsorship deal has been agreed, Rangers are still in the search for a new permanent chief executive.
Previous CEO James Bisgrove departed for the Middle East in May, and acting chief executive John Bennett, the club’s chair, stepped down from both roles last week (September 14) for health reasons.
