The Russian Premier League (RPL) goes on winter break from early December to early March, awkwardly splitting a 30-game schedule into 19 and 11-game chunks, with the shorter half played in March, April and May. The season begins back in mid-July, about a month earlier than most of the top European leagues, which can avoid the lengthy winter break.
When it comes down to it, football in Russia is a messy endeavor. For 12 of the RPL’s current 16 clubs, football between mid-October and mid-April isn’t much fun, especially with the majority of stadiums dating back to Soviet days. Drainage is bad, seats are unprotected from the elements. For those November, December and March matches, you may as well be playing on asphalt.
Unfortunately, Europe is a lot warmer and has long dictated the fall-spring schedule, which allows for international tournaments in June and July.
If the RPL could have its way, clubs would play April — October, attendance would surge and players would finally get a decent rest in the winter. But UEFA and FIFA hold the pursestrings. Euros and the World Cup aren’t going anywhere and Russia must accommodate, paying a heavy price — no football in June and early July.
Given the circumstances, the only solution is to pump out dozens of state-of-the-art stadiums which will be able to ameliorate the weather conditions, at least enough to attract fans in the cold months, and keep the play on the field from devolving into an ugly mess of chip-and-run tactics, with skill secondary to fitness and luck.
Imagine if, for 2 months of the season, the NBA installed uneven, pock-marked concrete courts and made its millionaire superstars risk injuries game after game, not to mention the guaranteed decline in quality of play. That’s roughly what happens every Russian winter on lots of RPL pitches.
The funny thing is, much like America, Russia is big enough that a number of clubs, those in the far south, Krasnodar, Kuban, Terek, Anzhi, enjoy a much milder winter. Down in the Caucasus or by the Black Sea, it’s not too much to ask to play into early December. And by March, spring is on the way, unlike Moscow, which rarely thaws out until May.
Ironically, they’ve also got two of the new stadiums — Anzhi in Makhachakala and Terek in Grozny, with Kuban and Krasnodar both building, too.
Elsewhere, World Cup 2018 stadium construction is the only hope in regional cities like Nizhny Novgorod, Rostov and Samara, whose clubs don’t have financial backers with enough cash to pay for a $400 million facility (the expected cost of most World Cup venues in Russia).
The good news is that if current construction plans hold true, by 2020, Russia will boast modern football stadiums in the following cities: St. Petersburg, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Ekaterinburg, Kazan, Rostov, Samara, Volgograd, Saransk, Kaliningrad, Krasnodar, Sochi, Vladikavkaz, Grozny and Makhachkala.
Moscow will have 7 — Arena Khimki (without an official team), Eduard Streltsov Stadium (Torpedo), Otkritie Arena (Spartak), VTB Arena (Dynamo), CSKA Stadium, Lokomotiv Stadium and Luzhniki Stadium (national stadium in downtown Moscow). Krasnodar will have 2 — Kuban and Krasnodar’s new facilities.
That’s 22 facilities, 14 of which would house current Premier League teams, 5 — First Division sides and 3 — without a tenant (at least at present).
A few of the projects are up in the air — Alania Vladikavkaz, 2nd in the First Division, is at risk of bankruptcy and may never see its construction plans come to fruition.
Torpedo Moscow, meanwhile, fighting for promotion to the Premier League next season, has been playing an hour south of Moscow this year due to financial constraints. But Mikhail Prokhorov, the free-spending Brooklyn Nets owner, has plans to revamp the old Torpedo facility on the banks of the Moscow River, transforming it into a 14,000-seat indoor arena that would be able to host RPL matches. Whether that happens, however, or if Torpedo ends up playing there, even if it is built, is another question altogether.
What does all of this mean? Primarily, that Russian football will soon, and, in fact, is already undergoing the birth pangs of a new era. Massive government and private investment will transform the conditions in which professional football has been played in Russia for decades. Fans will be able to watch the game in much greater comfort and the ability to market the game, both on TV and to foreign players considering moving to Russia, will be much easier, given vastly improved field conditions.
But the investment comes at a huge risk. No one knows if the fans will show up and if club profits will spike — the only thing that can guarantee the Russian league a competitive future in the high-stakes world of European football.
Russia’s vast energy and mineral wealth, directly responsible for most clubs’ budgets as of today, could one day run dry. If profits from TV, merchandise and ticket sales haven’t increased dramatically if/when that happens, the level of Russian football will drop dramatically, sinking down to the level of any other middling European nation — say Norway or Serbia.
You see, Zenit, the RPL’s most commercially viable club, nets about $65 million per year in profit (stadium, merchandise, TV, Champions League, sponsors). The rest of its $165 million budget comes from the state. Spartak pulls in about $40 million, with an overall budget of just under $100 million.
After that, the money drops off dramatically. Lokomotiv, Dynamo and CSKA, Moscow’s other top clubs, average fewer fans per game, with lower ticket prices, while spending in the $100 million range in recent years. They also lack the sponsor, merchandise and TV money of Spartak and Zenit, Russia’s two most popular clubs.
Down south, even with clubs like Anzhi and Kuban drawing better, ticket prices are significantly lower and other sources of income practically nonexistent. For the average RPL club, profits average about $3-4 million (including TV money from the league), while the average budget, outside of Zenit and Moscow clubs, is around $35 million. For most clubs, real profit contributes about 10% of the budget with the rest coming out of the owner and government sponsors’ pockets.
As the numbers clearly reflect, the public simply doesn’t care enough about professional club football. A recent article on Championat.com, a popular Russian sports site, reported that only 7% of the population has an active interest in the RPL.
Can the 2018 World Cup stir interest in the game? The national team has always been relatively popular, enjoying much higher TV ratings (though often poor attendance in Moscow). Even if the tournament is a huge success, will it translate to more interest in club football? Will the new stadiums make a difference? How will clubs navigate ticket prices, which are laughably low by European standards and when taking into account the salaries their players earn? But when the average Russian household outside of Moscow or St. Petersburg only earns $700-1000/month, can it afford anything more than $10 tickets?
Barring an outrageous growth in popularity over the next 10 years or a sustainable, nationwide economic boom that spikes real salaries for most of the population, I can’t see any way forward for Russia other than the tried-and-true government subsidy strategy of past decades. Perhaps someone else has an answer?
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