ASA confirms rejection of 78 complaints against Rangers advert claiming to be 'Scotland's most successful Club'
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has confirmed that it has found in favour of an advertising campaign released by Rangers Football Club that claimed the club was “Scotland’s most successful”.
78 complaints were made against the radio, press and email campaign for the football club, which included a radio campaign that stated: "Join Scotland's most successful club at IBROX and guarantee your seat for the last four games of the season. Rangers season tickets are priced from £69 for adults, £48 for concessions and just £17 for kids ...".
An email campaign also read “Join Scotland’s Most Successful Club at Ibrox.”
It has been claimed that many of the complaints were made by fans of long-time rivals Celtic in a co-ordinated campaign, who said that the claim over the club’s historic success was misleading as they understood that the current club had only been formed in 2012.
The ASA explained that the club responded to the claims by stating that the previous club, which entered administration in February 2012, saw its assets purchased by another company, now known as Rangers Football Club.
The club also issued extracts from rulings from an independent commission appointed by the Scottish Premier League, which confirmed the continued existence of the football club, while another letter from the European Club Association also recognised the club as a founding member, with the same fans, same stadium and same club, same trophies and coefficient ranking. Similarly the club also pointed to the websites of both the Scottish Football Association and UEFA stating that the club had been in existence for 140 years and detailing all of its honours over that period.
As a result, the ASA did not uphold the complaints, accepting the evidence given to it by Rangers Football club and added that it considered consumers would understand the claim was related to the football club, rather than whichever club owned or operated it.
“We therefore concluded that it was not misleading for the ad to make reference to RFC's history, which was separate to that of Newco,” the ASA ruling continued.