Six brave

A desperate group of senators decided to ban the financing of private clubs at the expense of state-owned companies. While the effect is zero

The six senators who initiated the consideration by the State Duma of the law on the termination of financing of professional sports by natural monopolies and state corporations obviously expected a more serious effect. They stood up for the people, reflected their aspirations and hopes, proposed revolutionary changes in the structure of sports financing - and the reaction of the people, the athletes, and the main stakeholders - state corporations - turned out to be close to zero.

Of course, normal people have long been fed up with watching how the same Gazprom or Russian Railways compete in multimillion-dollar spending on their football clubs (Gazprom has them not only in Russia). Judging by the minimum return, people's money is thrown to the wind; the number of "underfed" teams is increasing; managers get used to living at the expense of others; incentives to educate homegrown athletes disappear; and, in the end, to maintain too expensive toys at the expense of citizens is anti-people, immoral and futile.

I would be in favor with both hands if I saw in the initiative of Vyacheslav Fetisov and the company exclusively concern for our well-being, as well as the thoughtfulness of such a step - well, at least a step forward. But for now, this is a throw to nowhere, more like both a populist PR move and the result of an undercover struggle between different power clans.

Our professional sports (not just football, hockey and basketball) least of all resemble a business structure and are supported mainly by federal and regional budgets, state corporations and, to a lesser extent, private companies. There is no question of any self-sufficiency even in those forms where it is theoretically possible to earn (on the sale of rights from television broadcasts, tickets and paraphernalia), in the case of Russian realities. The losses are direct, soap bubbles periodically burst, but until nothing else is invented, the ugly structure somehow holds on, and injections are justified by the prestige, social responsibility and ambitions of a particular structure or a single oligarch.

Shifting everything onto the shoulders of the "separately taken", which is obviously meant by the "project of six", will not work: there are no fools. The number of private companies wishing to please Russian sports is not increasing, especially since no preferences are meant for them. About how to support football teams at the expense of regional budgets, they can tell in Tomsk or Vladikavkaz.

In general, when the senators' proposals are implemented, something like what happened to big-time sports in the early 90s can happen - "survive as you want." You can live without legionnaires and without your stars. But, firstly, one must be fully prepared for an honest, but poor sports life; secondly, the consequences will affect not only the “fat cats”, but all areas, not excluding children's and mass sports (which now at least have leftovers from the master's table, but get it); and thirdly, the number of people with state feeders will not decrease.

It is naive to hope that the released funds will be used to transform the sports system, and that the people will feel relief in the form of a reduction in vital tariffs, is naive. If we are to return the presumptuous state monsters to reality, then we will have to turn Russia as a whole upside down, changing the entire current political and socio-economic structure of the country. No, the senators pulled the wrong thread, definitely the wrong one.

Most likely, the case will be limited to a call to state corporations to spend "on toys" more reasonably and less defiantly than now. And even if some proposal passes, Gazprom will find ways to get around it. In the Kremlin, they will support him: he can’t do without big-time sports today.