Bookmakers stopped taking bets on Glasgow Rangers suffering the embarrassment of finishing bottom of the Scottish Premiership this season on Monday. That is because there have been rumours circulating that the club are facing administration. Graeme Murty’s men are nowhere near the drop zone in terms of points as at the time of this happening, they were 23 points off the bottom.
Famously, Rangers fell into administration and receivership in 2012 and had to rebuild their way back from the Old Third Division to the top flight. If they were to go into administration then the points penalty for that would be fifteen points and if that were to happen right now, that would put them in seventh, a point behind St Johnstone.
There are only eleven games until the Premiership splits up into two sections, the top six and the bottom six. Each side then plays a further five games against the others in their section so if Rangers were to suffer a points loss but still make the split then they wouldn’t have any issues of relegation, because no-one from the top six after the split can be relegated.
On Sunday, January 7th, Rangers were an enormous 5,000/1 price across the board to finish bottom of the Scottish Premiership, but then a flurry of bets came in on them, to the point where the price had been slashed to 500/1 on Monday morning before bookmakers had to suspend the market altogether. There was so much abnormal activity it was reported that now 94% of all bets on ‘to finish bottom of the league’ markets have gone on Rangers.
Their position in the league, of course, didn’t warrant the heavy influx of bets coming on for them to finish bottom of the pile and that set red flags going. But with the rumours going around and escalating on social media about administration, the wagers kept coming and the bookmakers had to taken action and suspend the book.
