Douglas Park wins case against Scottish Sun journalist as Rangers claim proven untrue
Douglas Park has won a case against the Scottish Sun after one of its writers claimed that Park’s of Hamilton had breached the SPFL cinch sponsorship agreement.
Park’s of Hamilton, led by the recently departed Ibrox chairman, had made a complaint to the Independent Press Standards Organisation over an article penned by Bill Leckie.
The IPSO upheld the the complaint as a breach of Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Editors’ Code and ordered the publication of this ruling.
The 72-year old tycoon recently stepped down from the board although he remains a significant minority shareholder of Rangers, with a total stake of 11.83%.
Mr Park has long been an adversary of the SPFL’s title sponsorship agreement with the online car dealer, Cinch.
He believes that the deal struck by the league body breaches a commercial agreement which was already in place between his firm, Parks of Hamilton, and Rangers.
The ruling from the IPSO will obviously please Park, in the ongoing saga which sees the Ibrox club displaying no cinch branding on the player’s shirts or on any advertsing boards around the club.
The Scottish Sun did not accept the breach of the Editor’s Code as stipulated by the press standards body but ultimately, Park’s complaint was upheld.
No longer chairman, but still very relevant
It may appear that this ruling has little to do with Rangers, but that is far from the case.
The club is directly involved, as stated above, in the ongoing battle between the SPFL and Park’s of Hamilton.
Although Park is no longer chairman at Ibrox, he is still a very relevant figure and a known ally of his successor, John Bennett.
It will be interesting to see what emerges further from the overall dispute which is quite embarrassing for the SPFL, especially when Rangers are one of the cornerstones of Scottish football, yet on occasions like last Saturday’s Old Firm clash at Parkhead, there is no sign at all of the cinch branding on the famous blue shirt.
As had been underlined with this IPSO ruling, there will be no backing down in this confrontation between Rangers, Park’s of Hamilton and those in the positions of power at the SPFL.
In other Rangers news, Kris Boyd reacts to breaking Rangers & Ross Wilson news live on Sky Sports.