Fan, leave

What happens around FAN ID and can it cancel it?

The FAN ID Law was adopted back in December 2021, but Russian fans and clubs saw all its destructive power only at the beginning of 2023. And with her, among the football speakers and officials, there was suddenly talk about the possibility of his abolition. What happens to FAN ID?

How was the law adopted?

The discussion in 2018 was actually launched by Vladimir Putin when he stated that the experience with FAN ID at the World Cup can be scaled. For about three years there was a sluggish discussion, the head of the World Cup organizing committee in 2019 spoke out against the introduction of a fan passport in the Russian Prime Minister of the League (RPL), because it is “unthinkable and does not make much sense”.

The clubs spoke out against, but everything changed the 2021st year. First, FAN ID got into the info when they began to issue it at Euro 2020 (the tournament was held a year later), but the CSKA-Zenit match was the real incident on November 28, 2021, when 408 people were detained in the match due to pyrotechnics.

In autozaks, they loaded all out of the fan tribunes of everyone indiscriminately and kept the detainees all night in the department. Such severity was incomprehensible even to the police officer himself: “The guys on the other side of the stands do not know where the signal for loading came from, and they are surprised no less than the fans, but the order is an order,” the situation “Match TV” Vasily Konov described the situation.

Usually, an entry from surveillance cameras is used to identify violators, but for some reason this time they worked only on viewing and did not conduct an entry, because of this they had to take everyone.

In the wave of such a noisy case, the Duma in an accelerated mode held the law, and a month later Vladimir Putin signed the document after adoption in three readings.

The football management has no illusions about who needs FAN ID: “This is not just invented-the initiative from our law enforcement agencies, and we perform it,” said Rubin General Rubin Saimanov in March 2021.

At the beginning of this season (August 2022), the FAN ID earned only at the matches of five teams of the Russian Championship (there were no Moscow teams and St. Petersburg Zenit among them), but since the New Year the fan’s passport became mandatory.

In the first two rounds after a winter break, traffic became catastrophic on all arenas, and a photo from the stands with a sad cumber at the beginning of the zero. Just a few digits:

1. In the first round, after the widespread introduction of FAN ID, the attendance of the matches of Spartak and Zenit fell by 66 and 42 percent, respectively, compared with the average figure this season (the fan sectors of the clubs boycotted the matches even then);

2. Compared to the last new season of 2018/2019, a drop in the attendance of Muscovites and St. Petersburg - 86 (!) And 59 percent;

3. In the second round, after the break, an amazing match took place, in which the Torpedo in Khimki gathered 200 (!) people in the stands.

And what do the fans do not like at all?

The essence of the law is that you can’t get to football, just having bought a ticket, as it happens with any other mass entertainment - cinema, festivals or concerts. Now, to pass to the stadium, you need a "fan passport", which needs to be done on public services.

The arguments of the fans are reduced to several key arguments. The main thing: a passport is an unreasonable collection of personal data, the issuance of the power organs of the opportunity to close the entrance to football to any person at any time without explaining the reasons. From this, for example, during Euro 2020, on which the passport was running, people who went to rallies and received administrative penalties were injured.

Secondly, the fans do not understand the advantages of this innovation (and there are, indeed, there are no reasons for which hockey, basketball and even the Russian football Cup can be used on the passport of the fan, but there is no RPL.

Thirdly, FAN ID literally does not give any advantages.

At the World Cup, he was part -time traveling by trains and metro and a visa for foreigners, but the main thing was that it was used at a particular tournament, which was neither before nor after.

Such a perception of the FAN ID first led to a boycott of visiting matches with a fan passport by 15 out of 16 fan communities (except for Akhmat), and then to failure at all matches, that is, ordinary fans were more likely to support the boycott.

Does the leadership of the League and Clubs see the problem?

Representatives of clubs and all Russian football timidly talk about the problem with attendance. But an artificially created situation is served as force majeure-as if it is such a new covid that requires inventive solutions to an unexpected problem.

RPL President Alexander Alaev: “We do not cancel the laws, do not implement or introduce. We fulfill the laws. Now the law in the form in which it is. 207 people are a disaster and sad. ” That is, the head of the league sees the problem, but applies to it as a given, a new pandemic.

Dynamo CEO Pavel Pivovarov: “I support Alaev’s position that nothing to decide for a boycott. <...> I think that over time, the number of fans in matches will increase. The club will work on it. "

It seems that the general director of Spartak Yevgeny Melezhikov also spoke out: “By attendance, we predicted a decrease, our main task is to increase it: the introduction of a loyalty program, including the initiated RPL, and develop the Matchadei plus of the prize draws.”

Almost all RPL clubs went the same way: instead of statements against FAN ID, promotions are held that must motivate fans to issue a passport. Here, who had enough money for anything: “Khimki” among those who issued FAN IDs are playing calendars, “Zenith” - Lada Granta.

And someone except the fans against?

Yes, and the coalition is very wide: the overwhelming number of players of those who expressed, commentators, ex-functioners and suddenly the Communist Party and Vitaly Milonov.

Captain "Spartak" Georgy Dzhikia: “Exit? Well, yes, I probably see. Remove this fan id. Why are there on football, but conditionally on other [sports] - no? On others, where more than five thousand gather, this is not. What is it connected with? Why is this happening? "

The legend of the Russian national team Andrei Arshavin: “This is a disaster! Fans will become four times less. ”

The goalkeeper of Krasnodar and the Russian national team Matvey Safonov: “There are fans who know that they need to go to the MFC. They will say: "I need it for horseradish?" Sorry for my French. <...> I don't understand why this was done. <...> But, it seems to me, all this is solved. Another question is whether people want or not. ”

The commentator “Match TV” Georgy Cherdantsev: “We still, how much time has passed, we have not received an intelligible explanation why this passport is needed. For security reasons? For a year now he has been going on. For all this time, there was not a single incident on football, despite the fact that in cities where the fan’s passport was not needed, there was high attendance, and the final of the Cup last year collected full “Luzhniki”, and during all this time there was not a single more serious incident. ”

These are only the most striking quotes, the former director of the FSB Sergey Stepashin, commentators Dmitry Guberniev and Vasily Utkin, the Russian national team coach Valery Karpin, the legends of the national team Dmitry Sychev, Roman Pavlyuchenko and Alexander Mostova spoke out.

But the most unexpected opponents of the FAN ID are the Communist Party faction and the unicorn Vitaly Milonov joined them. The Communist Party deputy Sergei Obukhov calls the law “restriction of our rights under the guise of convenience of digitalization” and even “social racketeering”, Milonov believes that the implementation of the law is “not super” and the problem cannot be silent.

And what, is the law signed by Putin can be canceled?

The chances are small. It was Putin who gave the impulse to the law on FAN ID, and the specifics of Russian lawmaking practically excludes the likelihood of introducing a bill on the abolition of the current law.

And from the authorities, only representatives of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, who have a nominal right to speak in the opposition on domestic political issues, and characters like Vitaly Milonov, who have proposed to ban the DDT group for large fatal fathers and called for the PMC “Redan” to engage in “pricing of the villains”, are critical of the authorities.

But hope for a review of the decision remains: firstly, financial and reputational damage to clubs is too obvious. According to Sports.ru, the total losses of the league clubs will amount to about one and a half billion rubles per season, and Spartak and Zenit will lose up to 400 million. Secondly, the law has a very simple loophole-it, in fact, is a frame, there is no clear indication of the use of the RPL or any other tournament, that is, the league can be taken out of its action with one order of the government in the same way as it was introduced precisely for the matches of the Russian championship. Another possible option is to amend the text of the law and the transfer of its actions only to international competitions, this is exactly what the Communist Party deputies proposed last week.

So far, these options are unlikely, but an artificially created problem may well lead to the only obvious solution - the cancellation of a measure that does not carry any advantages for the authorities, but carries a lot of costs.