Her Majesty’s Government find Ibrox club guilty in price fixing cartel

Following on from paying off Sports Direct, the club from Ibrox are braced for a fine from the Competition and Markets Authority over price fixing on shirt sales. 

After trying to cut Sports Direct out of their retail operation Dave King struck a deal with Hummel and Elite Sports that saw the iconic Danish chevrons appear on the famous blue jersey. 

JD Sport had a separate deal with Hummel and decided to charge disloyal bears £55 for a home shirt which was £5 less than the price that loyal bears were paying for the same shirt at Elite Sports. 

Rather than drop the price at Elite Sports the Competition and Markets Authority discovered that the club and the two retailers got together to grab an extra £5 from hard up bears. 

This morning the CMA announced: 

The provisional findings are: 

Elite Sports and JD Sports fixed the retail prices of a number of Rangers-branded replica kits and other clothing products from September 2018 until at least July 2019. 

Rangers FC also took part in the alleged collusion but only to the extent of fixing the retail price of adult home short-sleeved replica shirts from September 2018 to at least mid-November 2018. All 3 parties allegedly colluded to stop JD Sports undercutting the retail price of the shirt on Elite’s Gers Online store. 

At the time, Elite was the manufacturer of Rangers-branded clothing and also sold Rangers-branded products directly through Gers Online Store and later in bricks-and-mortar shops in Glasgow and Belfast. The only UK-wide major retailer selling those products at the time was JD Sports. 

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) alleges that Rangers FC became concerned about the fact that, at the start of the 2018-19 football season, JD Sports was selling the Rangers replica top at a lower price than Elite, which was seen at the time as the club’s ‘retail partner’. This resulted in an understanding between the 3 parties that JD Sports would increase its retail price of the Rangers adult short-sleeved home replica shirt by nearly 10%, from £55 to £60, to bring it in line with the prices being charged by Elite on Gers Online. 

Mr King walked away from the chairmanship of the troubled company in March 2020. 

Her Majesty has still to comment on the lack of water bottles at the Europa League Final in Seville.

CLICK HERE for the full CMA findings.