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bne July 2017 Eastern Europe I 49
other reports have emerged of 190 North Korean labourers being forced to work effectively as slaves in the building of the St Petersburg venue.
In February, the government said it had boosted its spending
ticket holders to apply for a personalised fan-ID, will ensure that fans are screened and hooligans are kept away.
Tickets for the World Cup itself have been priced from $105 to a record $1,050 – putting attendance out of
"I think there will be a last-minute rush to get the sponsors on board," Sasha Goryunov, a pundit for Russia's Match TV and a regular on The Guardian newspaper's football podcast, tells bne IntelliNews. "Whilst other factors – such as politics – play a role, I think the general lack of organisation plays a
part too and the fact that FIFA are in a permanent state of crisis at the moment."
Domestic football fans are not betting
on Russia, now ranked a lowly 63rd in Fifa world rankings, to cover themselves in glory. The team has gone through three coaches in the past two years and recently lost a game to Qatar, relative nobodies in footballing terms. Putin even criticised the side after the Qatar loss.
The domestic game in Russia suffers from a lack of investment and is blighted by racism and hooliganism.
Alexander Zotov of the Professional Footballers’ Association says that players frequently go without any wages and cited the recent example of Voronezh, who haven't been paid for months despite earning promotion to the Premier League. “There’s about 3,500 professional players in Russia and most of them are not paid on time and they earn about an average of €500 a month,” says Zotov.
Zenit St Petersburg, backed by Gazprom, is the only team with a credible academy for young footballers and tends to snap up all the talent, according to Zotov. “But then they have no one to play against,” he says.
“I think there will be a last-minute rush to get the sponsors on board”
on preparations for the event by RUB19.1bn (€300mn), bringing total spending on the event to around €10bn, including investments from the public and private sectors.
Confederation Cup games can be lightly attended as countries, like the reigning champions Germany, tend to send second-string teams. However, some fans have been deterred by the price
of travelling and staying in Russia.
Tom Daly, a football fan from Liverpool, was the only one of his gang of friends who is braving Russia to attend the Confederation Cup. England fans have been warned in a BBC documentary that they are “100% guaranteed” to
be the target for Russian hooligans at the 2018 World Cup and that the tournament will be “a festival of violence” for some locals.
“I am more afraid of the extortionists rather than the hooligans,” Daly,
a media executive, tells bne IntelliNews after landing in Moscow. “I imagine the riot police will keep them in check. I have been to Champions League matches before in Russia and the
pitch was ring-fenced by soldiers.”
Since violent clashes between Russian and English football hooligans in Marseilles tarnished the European championship in France last year, Putin has introduced legislation that toughens punishments for violence at sporting events.
The authorities say the Confederations Cup’s ticketing system, which requires
the pockets of many of the locals, who earn about $500 a month on average.
Western sponsors have also so far been slow to come on board due to sanctions and Russia’s growing international isolation. Both Sony and Emirates are believed to have backed away from packages.
Alfa Bank, Russia’s second-largest private lender, was named a year
ago as the “first of up to 20 regional World Cup sponsors”. Gazprom, the energy monopoly, has been on board as a partner since 2013, while Chinese conglomerate Wanda and smartphone maker Vivo have since stepped in as partners in recent months.
Western corporates have cited the excessive $150mn cost of sponsorship deals and the fallout from Fifa’s 2015 corruption scandal, which led to question marks about the selection of both Russia and Qatar to host the World Cup.
Find more Eastern Europe content at www.bne.eu/eastern-europe
Selected headlines from past month:
· Alexei Navalny: potent sideshow pony in Russia’s one-horse race · US-Russia tensions soar with sanctions and aerial brinkmanship · Why Trump-Poroshenko relations are no easy fix
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