Jim McLean's Ghost Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 My initial thoughts on Ticketus are that they may have bought tickets from Rangers but are guaranteed payment based on ticket sales at Ibrox, whether Rangers FC are the stars of the show or not. That is a ridiculous notion. Ticketus do not own Ibrox (at least not yet). They made it quite clear they purchased tickets for Rangers home league matches for the next four years to the tune of £24M. Those tickets were sold by Craig Whyte, which he is perfectly entitled to do. However the tickets will only be valid for Rangers games. If you want to say they will be valid for a phoenix/continuation club then who knows? I would probably say yes since I don't think Whyte is that devious... maybe. How big a sting will ticketus be to the future. Let's say they have £30M worth of tickets (probably an over-estimate) for the £24M bulk buy to sell equally over 4 years, that is £7.5M a year. A Rangers ticket costs £25 so to cover that is 300,000 tickets which works out at approximately 17,000 per game. That still leaves 34,000 available seats for Rangers to sell to as long as they are still pulling in crowds over 40,000 then they will still be the second biggest team just further behind Celtic. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HibeeJibee Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 (edited) TicketUS are not daft....they will have a security somewhere just not a Standard one e.g Fixed or Floating charge that would be in the public domain, the Admin guys will be trying to find and assess if it is enforcable. My guess is tey have the right to ticket sales tied to the premises of Ibrox so that no matter what company ends up playing there they can sell the tickets, and so get their money back. Yes, it seems unbelieveable that Ticketus wouldn't have some watertight security anyway. It looks increasingly like Whyte has pals within Ticketus/Octopus and there is no way they weren't aware of his track record for liquidating companies. Whatever his plan for Rangers, they will be aware of it and through a proxy network of parent companies/subsiduaries will be fully active in the asset grab after the big tax case. That also looks distinctly plausible. They happily 'lent him on a proviso' £24M to buy a loss-running football club, with a massive tax tribunal looming. He's also got a track-record. Edited February 21, 2012 by HibeeJibee 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim McLean's Ghost Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 (edited) All ticketus purchases are insured. If the Rangers deal goes tits up then they will be able to make a claim against whoever they insured the investment with. Edited February 21, 2012 by Jim McLean's Ghost 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swedishsale Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 That is a ridiculous notion. Ticketus do not own Ibrox (at least not yet). They made it quite clear they purchased tickets for Rangers home league matches for the next four years to the tune of £24M. Those tickets were sold by Craig Whyte, which he is perfectly entitled to do. However the tickets will only be valid for Rangers games. If you want to say they will be valid for a phoenix/continuation club then who knows? I would probably say yes since I don't think Whyte is that devious... maybe. How big a sting will ticketus be to the future. Let's say they have £30M worth of tickets (probably an over-estimate) for the £24M bulk buy to sell equally over 4 years, that is £7.5M a year. A Rangers ticket costs £25 so to cover that is 300,000 tickets which works out at approximately 17,000 per game. That still leaves 34,000 available seats for Rangers to sell to as long as they are still pulling in crowds over 40,000 then they will still be the second biggest team just further behind Celtic. You have forgotten ticketUS profit margin of say 30% and I suspect it is tied to any events by any organisation at Ibrox and not just OLD or New rangers 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
H_B Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 Which is what I would call a negotiation.....I will do X of you do Y etc etc Well, it's a pretty one sided negotiation. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beano3d Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 (edited) So it's not aactually a pay cut at all. It's just a deferral of some wages? Which will presumably be paid at a later, more financially sound date. Bit uncharitable. Don't forget they're already foregoing their win bonuses.. Edited February 21, 2012 by Beano3d 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
H_B Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 You are correct in that you cannot make them keep you as an employee but you can make them pay you either by Compromise Agreement, or Trubuneral (if you win) Depends what you mean by "pay you". You can't make them pay up your whole contract, as Greg Strong and co found out. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
H Wragg Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 It appears that if all the rangers season ticket holders didn't renew and instead switched to Pay as you go then they could effectively help the club bump Ticketus for several million pound. Were I in charge at Ibrox I'd offer a "club membership" deal where you sign up to be direct debited on a game by game basis and that activates your membership card for that game. This very point was discussed on Sportsound on Saturday and Jim Traynor suggested (for what it's worth) that although the term 'season ticket sales' is the one generally being used, the actual wording of the deal may simply refer to 'ticket sales', thus rendering Rangers fucked, regardless of what method fans use to pay for their tickets. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skyline Drifter Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 Which is what I would call a negotiation.....I will do X of you do Y etc etc Really? You would call being summoned into a room and told you are being made redundant a "negotiation", because that's what will happen. I don't know anyone else who would call it that. You are correct in that you cannot make them keep you as an employee but you can make them pay you either by Compromise Agreement, or Trubuneral (if you win) Indeed, no-one has said otherwise. However, once made redundant they can put the liability on the back burner and mitigate the loss by the players finding other jobs elsewhere (on lesser pay most likely) or compromise agreements. So long as a player remains on payroll he needs paid in accordance with his contract. Once made redundant he becomes a creditor to be settled in the long term, most likely the better part of a year down the line. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
topcat(The most tip top) Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 Yes, it seems unbelieveable that Ticketus wouldn't have some watertight security anyway. It seems plausible to me. They're financed by venture capitalists gambling with other peoples money looking for big gains. Recent experience tells us that even people in traditional banking will make overly risky bets under those circumstances. The real security they have is that if they've done this kind of deal with several clubs then they should still see most of their money back if one of the deals goes bad. They haven't bet the whole farm on Rangers. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
topcat(The most tip top) Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 This very point was discussed on Sportsound on Saturday and Jim Traynor suggested (for what it's worth) that although the term 'season ticket sales' is the one generally being used, the actual wording of the deal may simply refer to 'ticket sales', thus rendering Rangers fucked, regardless of what method fans use to pay for their tickets. That's the kind of detail that has stopped me from living in Monte Carlo 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim McLean's Ghost Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 You have forgotten ticketUS profit margin of say 30% and I suspect it is tied to any events by any organisation at Ibrox and not just OLD or New rangers That is not how ticketus works. Investors make a 30% margin mainly because of tax breaks. Big clubs use this system quite a lot instead of banks so the actual margin on tickets must be competitive with available loans. Ticketus actually buy the tickets for a named event. It isn't some vague notion of owning a seat in a stadium, they actually own season tickets for Rangers FC for the next four years. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HibeeJibee Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 It seems plausible to me. They're financed by venture capitalists gambling with other peoples money looking for big gains. Recent experience tells us that even people in traditional banking will make overly risky bets under those circumstances. Perhaps. But it also seems that Whyte and Rangers dealings with Ticketus were not the normal way they worked... we've heard that such a large sum, over such a number of years, is very unusual. To add to that, it wasn't given to the club to help with running costs - it was provided to a third party (Whyte pre-takeover), quite clearly to help him take-over and clear a bank debt. Then add Whyte's reputation. It just seems a bit too much of a punt to me, without particularly high gains for the risk (he'd some way back simply postponed the first installment). Maybe they just took that punt, granted. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drooper Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 If they were daft enough tohave taken an unsecured position when a simple google search would have sent the alarm bells ringing then frankly it is their own fault. It seems they were daft enough to sign off a deal before Whyte was even in a position to offer any security. Daft enough, or some other arrangement was in place. Whyte is a patsy. Does David Murray have anything to do with Ticketus? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim McLean's Ghost Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 This very point was discussed on Sportsound on Saturday and Jim Traynor suggested (for what it's worth) that although the term 'season ticket sales' is the one generally being used, the actual wording of the deal may simply refer to 'ticket sales', thus rendering Rangers fucked, regardless of what method fans use to pay for their tickets. If Rangers don't sell the required number of tickets that Ticketus own in season tickets (they probably own 15,000 to 20,000 for each of the next three seasons) then Rangers will be obliged to sell the remaining ticketus owned tickets as individual match tickets first for walk up/pay at the gate type fans before they can start selling tickets that Rangers still own. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
welshbairn Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 They made it quite clear they purchased tickets for Rangers home league matches for the next four years to the tune of £24M. Those tickets were sold by Craig Whyte, which he is perfectly entitled to do. How could he be entitled to sell tickets for a club he didn't own? That unreliable lump of hate, David Leggat has come up with new theory, that maybe he wasn't: My link 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colin M Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 It's worth noting that Whyte has only 'mortgaged' about 30% of Rangers ST sales each season, IIRC. He took a sliver over £6M p/a and if Rangers have a bit over 35,000 STs paying a bit over £500, it's £19M. That is assuming that the money paid years in advance from Ticketus is for the total worth of the number of tickets. They have purchased the tickets - not necessarily at face value though. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim McLean's Ghost Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 How could he be entitled to sell tickets for a club he didn't own? That unreliable lump of hate, David Leggat has come up with new theory, that maybe he wasn't: My link How does a bank lend you money for a mortgage to buy a house you don't own? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Betelgeuse Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 STV are reporting Matt McKay is the first to leave, moving to an unnamed South Korean club. £250k for three appearances. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HibeeJibee Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 (edited) That is assuming that the money paid years in advance from Ticketus is for the total worth of the number of tickets. They have purchased the tickets - not necessarily at face value though. They can't be running that high a margin, though, or else clubs wouldn't be using them for what's normally cashflow smoothing. Albeit that doesn't preclude them having a higher mark-up for Rangers, in light of the unusual circumstances, granted. Edited February 21, 2012 by HibeeJibee 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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