Oil fueled

CSKA has found a title sponsor

Today, the Moscow football club CSKA will sign a contract with a new title sponsor - the only Russian top club that is not owned by state corporations and large companies. For the Champions League match, which will take place next week, the black and gold logo of Bashneft, which has recently become part of AFK Sistema, will appear on the red and blue T-shirts of the capital’s army team. Apparently, CSKA (unlike the less financially prosperous Krylya Sovetov) found a sponsor without resorting to the help of government leaders.

The financial parameters of the sponsorship agreement have not yet been officially announced. According to a Vremya Novostey source close to Bashneft, the company will enter into an agreement with the team for two to three years, under which CSKA will receive about $8 million per season. This is close to the terms of the army team’s contract with VTB Bank, which was valid in 2007-2008. Our newspaper’s interlocutor believes that given the current situation, the parameters of the agreement are “very pleasant” for both parties. However, it will clearly not be as profitable as the three-year contract concluded by CSKA in 2004 with Sibneft, owned by Roman Abramovich, under which the capital’s army team received $54 million. But the amount of the agreement will be clearly greater than what the “red-blues” received last season from its main sponsor Aeroflot $5 million.

Finding successful sponsors for Russian football clubs that are not affiliated with state corporations or large private businesses has recently become a real problem. The leader in terms of budget in recent years has invariably remained the St. Petersburg Zenit, generously sponsored by Gazprom. The capital's Lokomotiv, which is owned by Russian Railways, has no problems with financing. Moscow Spartak is financed by its owner, LUKOIL vice-president Leonid Fedun. Dynamo Moscow has had the hardest time lately, but last year control of the team passed to VTB Bank. The army team, the first in the Premier League to publish the team's budget, which last year amounted to $61.3 million, ended the year with a deficit of $11.3 million. Moreover, CSKA began the last season without a title sponsor - there were proposals for The cooperation did not suit the president of the club, Evgeniy Giner. Only after the highest-ranking army fan, Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, who oversees aviation in the government, intervened in the situation, did the club enter into an agreement with Aeroflot.

For Bashneft and its owner, AFK Sistema, concluding a contract with CSKA “was a mandatory step, because all the other large companies were already occupied,” says a source close to the negotiations. True, for Bashneft, which was collected last year from assets controlled by the son of the president of the republic, Ural Rakhimov, this move may become even more image-bearing, because the company receives a top-level “advertising medium” (the company is currently collaborating with the hockey team “Salavat Yulaev”). According to the source, the decision on sponsorship was made by shareholders, i.e. Sistema managers. At the same time, it is possible that the experience of cooperation with CSKA of the head of the fuel and energy sector business unit at Sistema, Alexander Korsik, a former top manager of Sibneft, also played a role. However, it is quite possible that the management of Bashneft will still have to face the bewilderment of the Ufa oil workers. A similar situation occurred quite recently with the Krasnoyarsk metallurgists of Norilsk Nickel, who were indignant at the fact that the company finances the Moscow football club, which has nothing to do with the region. His story, as we know, ended sadly.

Kirill MELNIKOV