February 20, 2013, 15:05 / Finance

Otkritie Arena is a new home for Spartak

The owner and veterans of the club, sports and football authorities - about the new arena of one of the most popular clubs in Russia Alexey Rozhkov Natalya Samarina

D. Abramov / Vedomosti

The presentation of the joint project of the Spartak football club (Moscow) and the Otkritie bank took place on Tuesday in Tushino, where the stadium for Spartak is being built. The bank became a partner of the club: Spartak and Otkritie entered into an agreement under which the new stadium will be called Otkritie Arena for at least six years. The amount of the transaction, announced by the chairman of the board of directors of Spartak, the main owner of the club Leonid Fedun and the chairman of the board of directors of FC Otkritie Vadim Belyaev, is 1.2 billion rubles. (about 5 million euros per year). This money will be used to develop the club’s academy, its infrastructure, projects to support veterans and youth football. Starting from the 2013/2014 season, Spartak's uniform will feature Otkritie's branding, and negotiations are underway to create joint co-branding cards.

A dream come true

“When I was growing up, Cherenkov, Rodionov, Shavlo played in Spartak, and if in 1995, when my partners and I were creating Otkritie, they would have told me that I would be involved in such a project, I would not have believed it.” , Belyaev said at the presentation. Selling the rights to use a company name is a common practice in the world. For example, the stadium of Bayern Munich is called Allianz Arena, and the stadium of London Arsenal is called Emirates Stadium. Otkritie’s contract with Spartak is comparable to agreements between the largest European clubs: for example, Borussia Dortmund receives 4 million euros per year from Signal Igunda for the right to name the stadium, and Hamburg receives 4.2 million euros per year from Imtech company.

Construction of the stadium will cost nearly $500 million, Fedun said, and “thanks to Otkritie for lending their financial support.” Since 1935, Spartak players dreamed of their own home, their own stadium. Construction, according to Fedun, is going according to plan, concrete work on the arena is almost completed, installation of the roof and installation of internal systems will begin in the near future. $150-200 million have already been spent on construction, Fedun told Vedomosti. The businessman hopes that Spartak will start playing at its stadium in 2014. The national team should also play here, Fedun is convinced. This idea was supported by the President of the Russian Football Union (RFU), Nikolai Tolstykh, who came to Tushino. The president of the Russian Olympic Committee, Alexander Zhukov, who has been a fan of Spartak since childhood, and Nikita Simonyan, the famous Spartak player (repeated USSR football champion as a player and coach), champion of the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, gave short but emotional speeches.

Not only the stadium - for 160 billion rubles

The Tushino 2018 project, which Fedun’s companies are involved in, provides for the construction of the stadium itself for Spartak, a universal sports hall (where, according to Fedun, one of the media centers for the 2018 FIFA World Cup can be located) and other sports facilities: two business palaces, a tennis academy, a water sports palace, schools and kindergartens. “There will be a sports corner here, in New Tushino, in the new Moscow!” - says Fedun.

In addition to sports facilities, residential and commercial real estate will be built in Tushino. To the question “Will Otkritie FC, which has its own development business, participate in these projects?” Belyaev replied: “About 1 million square meters will be built here. m of housing. We are thinking, but there are no concrete decisions yet.”

Fedun estimates the entire Tushino 2018 project at approximately 160 billion rubles. And it stipulates: in 2009 prices. The facilities must be built before 2020, own and borrowed funds will be used, but what kind of instruments these are - loans, bond issues, etc. - Fedun does not say. As Vsevolod Gordiy, general director of Tushino 2018 CJSC, said, the company already has offers from the largest banks - Sberbank, VTB: “We are in negotiations, the project is of great interest.”