Translated material
In one gate
Do we need a large, spectacular and expensive sport after the plague - or well in FIG?
The US President is especially once to spend time at the TV, but he was tired of watching the sports junk on TV. Therefore, Donald Trump, in a video conference mode, had already held a second meeting with the leaders of the largest sports leagues. Unlike sports functionaries, the president was filled with optimism even against the background of the peak of an epidemic in the States:
"We will return the sport in the form in which it should be."
At first - without fans, but with direct broadcasts. In the stands, viewers will appear gradually, at first located through two seats. And then-as in the good old days: full stadiums and sports bars, drives are not childishly, stars and stars close-up, a million spectacle, life as it is.
True, when the desired hour comes, no one even said approximately. Coronavirus crushed spectacular sport with a heavy stone, from under which only moans and sighs come. In Europe, the first to resume the Bundesliga season, long-suffering Italy is going to allow football clubs to start the training process also in May, the English Premier League is determined to complete the season in July, UEFA set the final of the club Eurosason on August 29, but all this is mostly approximately, very approximately and with considerable risks.
It is no accident that 45 fan associations of France filed an open letter against “football at all costs”. Because
Football without spectators and with a threat to the health of all participants is “football of shame, which has no future”.
The approximate losses of each of the top-ligs in the event of a underground season will be calculated by hundreds of millions, for the same Premier League-at least one and a half billion pounds, for the NHL-at least a billion dollars. Common sense and economy converge in an unequal battle, and there is a feeling that financial interest will try to win at all costs. Otherwise, sponsorship money and funds from TV will have to return, which threatens to redraw the entire sports market and bankruptcy of its weakest participants. A temporary decrease in salaries that athletes of most professional clubs agree to is too fragile backup.
The sports world is simply waiting for the return of blessed times, about which the great friend of athletes Donald Trump said.
But no one decided to say that there would be no former high.
They will not. And even more so with us. In Russia, everything will depend on how much the state is finally released, finally, a large sport in free swimming. In the sea, where an unprecedented storm rages.
There are three mantras that we have heard for many years, and which do not oblige anyone to anything. The first and oldest: the Russian economy should get off the oil needle. The second and the most crafty: small and medium -sized businesses are time to stop nightmare. The third and most hopeless: it is unacceptable to finance professional clubs at the expense of state -owned companies and the budget.
The latter does not get tired of reminding the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin, but an amazing thing - the reaction should be almost zero, and the discussions are fading away, barely beginning. Because there is nothing to discuss about. As the Russian economy for the time being safely sat on the oil needle, so sport sits on it. Well, on local budgets, of course. There is no progress in this matter, because successful companies and industries that are not dependent on oil and gas, and are ready to invest in unprofitable sports toys, our cat cried. And to justify considerable budget infusions into the same football with social necessity recently to regions is becoming more and more difficult.
When the three horsemen of the new Apocalypse (oil prices that collapsed the ruble and coronavirus) announced the beginning of the new era, it was time to move from words to deed and solve the radical issue:
Do we need a big spectacular sport, or well in FIG?
Talk about when to resume the season, what to do to athletes in a forced simple, what to do with transfers and ensure the life of clubs are important, but still details. If you look at at least six months ahead, then the overall picture with the current development of events can be extremely sad.
The first, with the initial signs of the crisis, the owner of Spartak Leonid Fedun scored anxiety, predicting Russian football extremely difficult, close to catastrophic times. As one of the few private owners, Fedun estimated the possible loss of the club, and was horrified. He was not understood - it did not immediately come to many that reality is ahead of the most gloomy forecasts.
Without waiting for the instructions from above, the start of the campaign called “look to the truth” gave Primorsky Territory, who knew the impossibility of finishing two professional clubs - the Continental Hockey League left the Admiral, the second largest division of Russian football FNL - “Ray”. The Far East was followed by FC Armavir, but so far it has stalled the matter - and few private traders, and the state employees calmed down, solving local problems and waiting for the further development of events.
Meanwhile, the new Minister of Sports Oleg Matytsin made it clear that
“The Ministry of Sports and the state will not finance professional sport to the volume in which he suffered losses ...
We must understand that state support measures should be directed to the social sphere. Professional sport will not be a priority. ” State Protection is needed by 5,000 organizations whose activities are suspended, one hundred thousand coaches - here is not up to big football, hockey, basketball and others.
The message was quite intelligible, but no one believed in it to the end. To completely deprive the top types of state support means bankruptcy or, at least, a change in the existence of almost all professional clubs. Nobody in Russia, by and large, is not ready for such a formulation of the question.
In the West, professional commercial leagues and clubs will survive with huge losses, but there at least the preservation mechanisms are clear, which initially do not involve the specific financial assistance of the state. The sale of rights to TV, tickets and subscriptions, attributes and related goods in matches are three whales on which the economy of popular game species is held in most developed countries. All three factors do not work at the moment, sponsors are also scratching in the back of the head, sequence of costs, including crazy contracts - inevitable things, the consequences are still impossible to calculate.
And our clubs live exclusively due to handouts, sometimes very generous. Well, it happened. Exists - close to crazy, budgets - not by merit, ambitions - not by the interest of the public. A few teams at least somehow justify its existence with real popularity and at least spectator support. The picture is very joyless, but familiar.
I have the feeling that now, in the situation of force majeure, the vast majority of clubs hopes that "itself will resolve." Generally, hesitated from high stands, and at the end of the crisis, everything will return to its circles, and the money will flow again. Because as a state without a Hockey football, without the consolation of millions, without a big game and a spectacle as a relaxation and discharge? This in the soulless West is built on commerce, and we have cross -ownedness where it is directly, and where it is indirectly, but guaranteed to be ensured by the state. It creaks, grins, but provides. And then it will provide - where will it go? And we will live as we lived. Well, perhaps a little more modest. And how to survive, let the state think for us.
And indeed, our power is not ready to say a firm “no” to such an approach. And the fact that six or seven clubs can remain in the same Russian football Premier League, including the Grozny Terek, the fans are not ready either. Is it only that part of the population that all these footballs to the light bulb is ready. Most likely, state -owned companies and regions will be secretly recommended to act according to the circumstances: you can tear off from the scarf budget also on football and other fun - tear off. The main thing is that everything is quiet and smooth, without popular unrest.
No one will succeed very smoothly. To resume the championships, probably with all the risks, is the simplest. But to the realization that survival is possible only if for a start to remove the extreme zero in the amounts of the budgets of clubs and players' contracts, no one has come yet.
And sooner or later - you will have to.