King Billy’s Orange Returns: Rangers Cash In On Sectarianism
Commercial and Marketing moves underline Rangers' willingness to profit from the sectarianism and bigotry of their supporters.
Rangers Football Club has once again stirred fierce controversy with the launch of their new fourth kit for the 2025–26 season - a blazing bright orange strip that can only be seen as a blatant nod to the club’s sectarian underbelly rather than any innocent design choice. Touted by Rangers as a “celebration of the identity of their supporters,” the kit is nothing more than a cynical commercialisation of their supporters Loyalist symbolism and anti-Catholic sentiment.
The club’s orchestrated unveiling, featuring singer Nathan Evans and Saint Phnx performing to the unmistakable tune of “Sloop John B,” has aggravated matters further - not least because this same melody has long been hijacked by elements of Rangers’ support for the infamous “Famine Song,” a sectarian chant mocking the Irish famine and Celtic supporters’ Irish roots. - despite the club using the song ‘Four Lads Had a Dream’.
The kit itself, designed by Umbro [owned by Castore], is predominantly bright orange - or as it’s affectionately referred to down Govania Way, King Billy Orange, in honour of William of Orange. Subtle pinstripes of blue and red adorn the sleeves and collars, faint tributes to ‘past eras’ according to the club’s marketing team. But to the wider footballing public, it’s the brazen symbolism that stands out: once again, Rangers appear comfortable leaning into an aesthetic steeped in sectarian nostalgia, serving as a commercial dog whistle to a fan base that has used the colour to proclaim triumphalist Loyalist identity. To describe this as a ‘definition of their supporters,’ as Rangers themselves have publicly claimed, only reinforces how deeply woven sectarian heritage remains in the club’s marketing machine. - despite the 49ers takeover.
This naked willingness to weaponise sectarianism and bigotry for commercial gain comes mere weeks after Rangers released a “Remembrance Day” football shirt, in another opportunistic cash-in under the guise of poppy-wrapped patriotism. Now, with the orange kit, the club plunges further into the same moral cesspit - exploiting both militarist nostalgia and sectarian symbolism to fill its coffers. Such gestures do not exist in a vacuum: they play directly into a long and well-documented pattern of pandering to their toxic support.
In a tone-deaf piece of PR, the launch video features Nathan Evans and Saint Phnx performing an anthem of Rangers pride to “Sloop John B,” the Beach Boys standard whose melody has been bastardised by Rangers fans into the “Famine Song.” That song’s lyrics, condemned by both legal authorities and anti-racism organisations, mock the Irish famine and tell Irish Catholics and their descendants in Scotland to “go home,” leading to numerous prosecutions. For Rangers, a club fully aware of the tune’s associations, to build a marketing campaign upon it reeks not of ignorance, but of deliberate provocation - cynical enough to stir loyalty and outrage at the same time.
The club’s insistence that this latest kit somehow honours the 2000 Scottish Cup Final is particularly laughable. They could have tried to use the old excuse of honouring their Dutch contingent of players at the club but there’s none!
In fact, the idea of Rangers fans wearing Orange - to honour their Dutch manager and playing contingent - germinated on the threads of that bigoted cesspit Follow Follow run by Chief Bigot himself Mark Dingwall, who’s fanzine of the same name was banned by David Murray in the 90s from Ibrox because of it’s sectarianism and bigotry. It is clear with anyone that has half a brain that there are obvious Loyalist subtexts, with the perfect shade of orange chosen matching the traditional King Billy hue of Loyalist banners and Orange Order sashes.
Rangers’ entanglement with sectarianism is not mere history - it is a living issue, repeatedly punished by football authorities alike. Since the early 2000s, Rangers fans’ behaviour has earned the club fines, stadium closures, and bans with the club’s record reading like a rap sheet filled with sectarianism, bigotry, racism, and hooliganism.
Their rap sheet barely scratches the surface of a culture too long tolerated by authorities in Scotland - one that Rangers now seem less interested in reforming than repackaging. The cynical commercialisation of sectarianism has become a brand pillar for a club that should, instead, be disentangling itself from its embarrassing past. Yet, every gesture - from staging “Loyalist orange” kits to soundtracking launch campaigns with melodies associated with racist chants - makes clear that Rangers find profitability in sectarianism.
It might be one thing were this an unintentional aesthetic echo; had Umbro [aka Castore] simply reached into the archives of the club’s kits from the early 2000s or late 1990s. But that argument dissolves the moment the orange hue is paired with marketing rhetoric about “defining our supporters.” It is an unvarnished wink to the kind of identity politics that thrives upon historical grievance, cultural dominance, and religious antagonism.
Rangers’ embrace of sectarian aesthetics is a recurring feature of the club’s identity cycle: every few years, controversy sells jerseys, outrage fuels engagement, and those in charge can publicly decry intolerance while privately counting profits. The bright “King Billy Orange” shirt will, no doubt, sell briskly across the loyalist communities in Scotland and Northern Ireland - less as a football top more a cultural uniform to march the streets wearing come July.
Commercially, under-fire Rangers’ executives will see this as another masterstroke - a “heritage-inspired” design to appeal to a rabid horde that is currently baying for their blood on Edmiston Drive. But in all honesty, it’s clearly another regression, emblematic of the club’s perpetual willingness to mine the club’s sectarian history for profit. The club’s statement describing the shirt as “the definition of who we are” could not be more revealing. In that one line lies the entire contradiction: a 21st-century football brand that one minute insists it abhors bigotry, yet endlessly exploits the symbols, colours, and tunes that nourish it.
And so, down Ibrox way, the songs of “King Billy” will belt out again - this time soundtracked by tills ringing. The orange shirt will flash under the floodlights, its wearers cheered or booed echoing through Glasgow’s nights, while the ghosts of old battles linger just beneath the polyester. For a club once banned and fined across Europe for sectarian hatred, there is perhaps no bolder display of sticking two fingers up to everyone than turning that shame into merchandise. Rangers, it seems, have decided that selling intolerance and bigotry is just good business.