Issue № 81. August 2020

Features of Russian Football Clubs Financing: Key Problems and Possible Solutions

Postgraduate student, Faculty of Economics, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russian Federation. 
E-mail: n.abdrashev@yandex.ru

After the World Cup 2018, the interest of Russian fans in football continues to grow. Despite this, more than a half of Russian football clubs remain unprofitable. The reason for this is the imperfect model of the professional football financing in our country. The main problems of the Russian clubs financing are the high level of dependence on the state-owned companies and regional budgets, the historical attitude to football as a social phenomenon, not as a commercial organization, the lack of clearly defined accounting standards, the lack of financial transparency, underdeveloped infrastructure and low match attendance. In addition, for the last few years the Russian economy had been in decline. The decline in the incomes of the citizen, currency fluctuations, and poor results obtained by teams in competitions have led to the stadiums being only half full. The articles of domestic and foreign researchers, Internet sources, statistical reports and other resources were used as a scientific base. In this work, we compare Russian clubs with European ones, explaining how the latter have gone from unprofitable to commercially successful organizations in the last ten years. What impact has the introduction of the rules of Financial Fair Play have on this? A brief overview of the changes in Russian football brought by the COVID-19 pandemic is provided. As a result, the measures that, if applied as a single set, can help Russian football clubs overcome the crisis and create a new commercial model for financing clubs are offered: reducing the share of governmental funds, developing a long-term strategy, increasing the club’s commercial attractiveness, developing a system for evaluating the effectiveness and efficiency.

Keywords

Russian football, financing, football club, financial fair-play, state companies, COVID-19.

DOI: 10.24411/2070-1381-2020-10081