James Bisgrove addresses MyGers and Rangers ticket concerns and provides New Edmiston House update

The club set an ambitious target of £27.9m at last year's AGM in November 2021 and that figure has been surpassed.

However, there is evident agitation amongst fans, whether that be the fairness of MyGers, Champions League ticket pricing, the difficult to use ticketing website or the quality of their merchandise from Castore.

We put a number of those concerns to Commercial Director James Bisgrove who attempted to explain the reasoning behind decisions and how the club have progressed off the pitch.

MyGers

There is no denying the membership scheme has been a success in terms of generating added revenue. With 51,000 members, it brings in between £1.5 to £2m that is ring-fenced for first-team operations.

Despite the financial boost to the club, many feel the scheme is flawed with little or no chance of acquiring an away ticket for domestic or European matches.

Bisgrove accepted supporter concerns but explained they are simply finding it difficult to satisfy the incredible level of demand.

"It’s a really difficult balance to strike," he admitted. "The fundamental challenge that we’ve got is that the demand for away tickets, domestic and European, outstrips supply 10, even 20-fold.

"For a domestic away game, we’ll be getting 20 to 25,000 applications from MyGers members but sometimes we’ll have one to two thousand tickets. We realise and recognise that we’re going to have a lot of disappointed members so that’s a challenge. Previously, it was a bit of a lottery, it was a rotational ballot and the starting point in terms of the strong feedback we were hearing was actually that wasn’t a fair way of doing it.

"I remember there was a gentleman who stood up at the AGM not long after I joined and he said, ‘I’ve had my season ticket for 20 years and I’ve missed out on a ticket at Hampden for the cup final but my next door neighbour whose had his season ticket for a year and he’s got a ticket, so how is this right?’

"So we went on a journey of creating a framework that recognised loyalty and prioritised ticket allocations in favour of supporters who’ve had season tickets for longer periods of time but, at the same time, ensure that it wasn’t a closed shop.

"The reason why there’s a Gold, Silver and Bronze allocation means if you are in the Bronze tier you’ve still got a chance of getting a ticket for most of the games but clearly, your chances reduce less than the supporter that’s in Silver and Gold. It’s really hard to get a framework that is going to satisfy everyone because we don’t have the supply. The onus on us is communication and transparency in terms of the numbers.

"I know that we continue to engage with different focus groups and different fan forums to shape the way that the loyalty framework of MyGers exists. It’s not set in stone, I don’t think we’ve absolutely perfected it but I can say with absolute confidence that it’s been shaped with supporter influence right at its very core."

Champions League ticket pricing and payment structure

As Rangers celebrated reaching the group stages for the first time in 12 years, the release of the three-match ticket package was met with frustration.

Season ticket holders were charged between £150 and £180 to watch their heroes in action against Napoli, Liverpool and Ajax with some unable to pay the amount in full given there was no staggered payment plan in operation.

Bisgrove admitted the club misjudged the pricing and explained why no payment plan was available for supporters.

He detailed: "We wanted that option to be available in terms of staggered payments and we put that challenge to our ticketing provider but they were unable to fulfill that request from the club.

"It was something that really disappointed us and one of the offshoots of that is that we’ve now gone to the market to tender for a new online ticketing platform because there is an acceptance that whilst our digital transformation strategy is now up and running, I think we’ve got one of the best website experiences, our CRM (customer relationship management) is really strong and Rangers TV is really strong, the ticketing sales platform is not.

"We see too many instances of supporter frustrations with that experience and this was just another symptom of that, so there is positive change coming there. We’ve been under a long-term contract which is why it’s taken longer than any of us would’ve liked.

READ MORE: Stewart Robertson details Rangers' Champions League financial reality

"In terms of the pricing itself, that was a topic that was debated right across the club’s boards. The executive team with the investor board to try and strike the right balance - we are at the Champions League level, this is the elite competition in world club football but also recognising that there’s an impact on supporters' wallets at a time when the cost of living is rising at rates that haven’t been seen for a long time.

"Also, families that are buying, mum and dad are buying a ticket for two children and that’s having a material impact on people’s budgets so the decision that was taken was obviously to tier pricing from £150. I think the majority of tickets were around £150 up to £180 depending on the level of seat.

"I think it’s one of those instances where the feedback we got, has to be a point of learning. But football is not a normal business because we cannot price purely based on the demand because the demand is huge. Those three-match packages even at those price points sold out instantly and I believe we could sell 150,000 for the Liverpool game so it’s about balance.

"I accept and acknowledge that for many supporters that balance was tipped the wrong way. There are things that I hope we can do in the future that will address that, particularly in terms of the ticketing platform."

Ticketing website and ticket office

We are about to move into October 2022 yet the Rangers online ticketing site feels very much like it's not improved with the times.

It's an area of concern for Bisgrove who told us that, alongside the ticket office, they are at pains to improve as quickly as possible.

"There’s a lot of investment both in terms of technology and resource and people in both of those areas," he explained. "From an overall digital eco-system perspective, we’re really advanced now and we’re in a strong place. The club website is one of the best out there in terms of user experience. It’s the same provider as Manchester City and PSG, it’s mobile-optimised and we’ve got one of the best CRM and data capabilities now through single sign-on.

"We have a million supporters on the database that we can segment, engage and personalise our communications. Our social media and engagement figures are really strong. We’ve actually got the highest engagement per follower ranking of any club in Europe so that just shows you how engaged Rangers supporters are with any content that we put out and Rangers TV subscriptions are at an all-time high. But central to that, we don’t believe our ticketing website is fit for purpose.

"There are reasons for that in terms of contractually where the club’s been but as of this week, we are now live in the market with a tender talking to the biggest and most advanced global providers of sports ticketing. We’re also, as you would expect, including New Edmiston House within that. We will run that process and we’ll appoint who we believe is the best provider in terms of that user experience within the next three to six months and there’ll be a roll-out that goes from that.

"Hopefully, you can see there’s an acknowledgment there on the ticketing side but there’s a broader eco-system where we have made considerable progress. On customer service, we brought on board a customer service manager – David Milburn, less than a year ago. Before David was with us, our customer service was very ad-hoc and sporadic across the club. The ticket office would answer some queries, the commercial team were answering queries and the operations team. There was duplication and there were long lead times but we have invested in the people there.

"David now has a team of six that are answering between 15 to 20,000 inquiries per month, 80 percent of those are being answered within one day. There is an alignment there in terms of the technology so that all the different teams can feed into David and his team and that’s a completely separate team from the ticket office. It doesn’t mean we’ve completely fixed it and it doesn’t mean that we can’t do more.

"I believe those 15 to 20,000 inquiries that are going into the customer service team will reduce dramatically once we have a ticketing platform that is more intuitive. There is a lot of emphasis on investment in people and technology in this particular area and the last thing I would say on that is there are a number of activities and initiatives that cater for supporters that are less digitally savvy.

"Supporters Liaison Officer Greg Marshall has put on a number of drop-in clinics within our fan hub at the stadium for supporters that would rather have service face-to-face and need a little bit of extra help. We’ve tried to open the ticket office outside of matchdays as well. These are topics that are really high on our agenda that we are very aware of and that we are investing in on a number of levels."

Castore

The sports retailer pride themselves on their 'Better Never Stops' tagline but it's fair to say many supporters have been unimpressed with quality control and customer service-related issues.

However, the partnership is worth around £6 to £7million a year to the club with Rangers outsourcing their retail operations to the group.

Despite the problems, it's one area Bisgrove is excited about going forward. 

"I think I’ve said on record before there are always opportunities to enhance and improve what we do but the relationship that we’ve got with Castore is an extremely positive one," he said. "Rangers are the marque partner of Castore, they say that on record. I talk to the founders often, they’ve gone on to partner with Red Bull and McLaren Formula 1 teams, three clubs in the Premier League, La Liga clubs and expanded their business to the valuation of around a billion now and £250million revenue.

"We’ve gone on a journey with them and Rangers still remain at the centre of what they do. We have a dedicated team that works on the Rangers partnership. We look at each design, it’s bespoke, it’s tailored to Rangers and not a template. They’ve helped expand this retail operation now to four stores, three are in Glasgow, one is at Ibrox, one in the city centre, one at Glasgow Airport and one in Northern Ireland. We’re about to open a fifth store next month in Ayr and we’ll open our first international store in 2023, probably in the UAE.

"It benchmarks right at the top of the industry in terms of the shirts that we sell so there is a lot of positivity to be taken from the Castore relationship especially when you consider where this club had been and the journey we’ve been on in a short space of time.

"But, imperfections given the volumes and selling three to four hundred thousand shirts exist and have existed but I am absolutely assured whenever we flag these Castore are quick to react to them and address them. They certainly never shy away so in my view we’ve got a really strong partner there that’s committed to the club."

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Sportemon Go collapse

Bisgrove has overseen a significant volume of commercial partnerships in the last two years but admitted the decision to enter the cryptocurrency market has left the club's fingers burned.

Despite teaming up with Sportemon Go as their back-of-the-shirt sponsor in October 2021, the NFT firm has since ceased trading.

Bisgrove told us why Rangers decided to get involved in such a volatile marketplace and whether the collapse of Sportemon Go would affect future affiliations.

"Lessons were absolutely learned," he admitted. "If you take a step back, in the last 18 months to two years, we’ve probably done between 40 to 50 commercial partnerships. We’ve grown our revenue from £1.5million to between £12 and £15million so we’ve structured our commercial concept and our sales approach in a way we’ve really been able to maximise ranges and brands and grow our sponsorship portfolio.

"The NFT and crypto space was one we identified as an emerging sector like many other clubs have done and continue to do. I saw Inter Milan had announced one I’d never heard of this week and Liverpool last week so football clubs are very active in this space and within a period of 18 months we generated several millions of pounds of profit into our commercial business through partnerships in this space.

"However, our fingers are probably burned given the Sportemon Go situation, the fact that token got wound up and because of the lead times involved in kit production on the back of the home kit this season doesn’t mirror Socomec which is our back of shirt energy partner on the first team shirt.

"I think, absolutely, we would be cautious to step into this space again given that experience but in the same breath, I feel as though we capitalised on an emerging market to the strong commercial benefit of the football club in that period."

READ MORE: £23m Rangers capital expenditure explained as revenue generation key to long term plan 

New Edmiston House

As much as there are boardroom concerns amongst the Rangers fanbase, there is a genuine sense of excitement at witnessing the development of New Edmiston House.

The building has entered the final phase of construction with the hope of opening in time for the Old Firm clash on January 2nd.

"I think it’ll make a huge difference and it’s such an exciting project to be part of, I genuinely feel it’s one of the most exciting projects in European football," he beamed.

"There’s a real focus and intensity in the work that’s going on behind the scenes. We’ve got a general manager of the building, Dave Pyatt that we’ve brought from one of the top music venues in London so he’s got great connections and great experience in music, in concerts and gigs and he helped us secure the Harry Styles deal. But there are so many other aspects, for example, the fan zone.

"We’ll operate the fan zone 30 times a year. It’ll be indoors and outdoors because of the configuration of the building. We’ll basically have, as we’ve got the Fan Village at the moment, an enhanced version of that with food, catering, there’ll be a licensed bar, live entertainment and we’ll have family activities as well.

"We’re really keen to provide a location, a destination and an experience for families before games. The C&E (Conferences and Events) business is going to be a really important part of the business model. We saw so many opportunities from COP26 that we weren’t able to accommodate and through the new joint venture with Levy which is a profit share, we’ve got a great opportunity to capitalise on some of the events business that exists in the west of Scotland and hopefully be that new venue that everyone wants to come and experience.

"There’ll also be the Rangers store there. There’ll be two floors of retail so that’s an exciting one with Castore.

"Castore have made a really strong commitment in terms of the level of fit out and also the expansion of the product range. They, together with our team, have been working on a much broader range of licensed products and accessories so that we’ve got a much more comprehensive retail experience. That, in itself, frees up the space where we currently occupy the Rangers store and we’re looking there at that becoming a sports bar or another supporter-based venue of some kind.

"Almost the crème de la crème if you like will be the club museum and that will open a little bit later because of the fit-out. It’s so intricate with some of the technologies and some of the casing in the different rooms so the museum’s likely to open in March."