BBC end long-running feud with Rangers as seven-year boycott is overturned

The BBC has ended its seven-year boycott of Rangers and will resume full reporting on Giovanni van Bronckhorst 's side from the beginning of the 2022-23 season.

While the broadcaster still remotely featured Rangers matches in their coverage, BBC journalists will once again attend games at Ibrox and take part in press conferences for the first time since 2015.

The decision comes after the network apologised for past failures to meet its own editorial standards. The BBC's boycott began seven years ago after Rangers banned reporter Chris McLaughlin alongside another journalist, Graham Spiers, a columnist with The Times.

The 55-time Scottish champions said that the ban was placed on McLaughlin after he wrote a match report which included the news of unrest in the stands, as Glasgow-based Rangers faced Edinburgh's Hibernian in the Challenge Cup, saying "three arrests were made after sectarian singing." The article in question was also given the headline: "Arrests made at Hibernian v Rangers Challenge Cup match."

At the time, a spokesperson for the Scottish Premiership giants told the Sunday Mail that, in their opinion, the BBC did not "seem to be applying proper checks and rules within their sports department." They added: "At the game you had police praising both sets of fans but he led on the fact Rangers could be in trouble because two people were arrested for alleged sectarian chants."

In a defence which kickstarted the boycott, a BBC spokesperson told Press Gazette : "We believe [the ban] was unjustifiable and we stand by the integrity and the quality of our journalism."

But now last season's Europa League finalists will have full focus over the upcoming campaign, as a statement from the BBC read: "A