Russian football teams may start bringing their shareholders something other than losses, with CSKA becoming the first to say it hopes to earn a profit of $168,000 this year.
The club's 2010 earnings will be $64.286 million, compared with 64.118 million in expenses, CSKA said Wednesday. About two-thirds of its revenue will come from sponsors and advertising ($23.3 million) and from the sale of players ($21 million).
The army club is also hoping to earn $13.8 million from the sale of television rights and participation in tournaments, with the remaining $6.2 million coming from its business activity.
Nearly half of the expenses — $31.867 — are for salaries and bonuses. Buying players will require $16.2 million, while $3.8 million will go to pay taxes. Apparently, the club has already fixed its expenses and income from trading players. The CSKA statement said the budget would not take into account possible future deals.
To date, not a single Russian football club has announced that it intends to make it through a season without asking for shareholders' help. Last year, CSKA had a planned budget shortfall of $11.4 million on expenses of $61.4 million.
The heads of Russian sports teams are reluctant to discuss budgets. Lokomotiv president Nikolai Naumov told Vedomosti that his club would spend $62 million this year. Companies linked to Russian Railways will help the team, but Naumov declined to say by how much.
Dynamo president Yury Isayev said his club would not publish its budget until the football league sets unified standards for information disclosures. But he conceded that Dynamo's budget was also in deficit. "Earnings are small, they need to be increased. That's the main problem for Russian football."
Spokespeople for Rubin, Spartak Moscow and Zenit did not respond to requests for comment on their teams' budgets. The midranking Amkar Perm has a 2010 budget of 700 million rubles ($23.7 million), according to its web site. The expenses are split evenly between the regional budget and the team's sponsors.
Russian football clubs are loss-making because — unlike their European counterparts — they make very little on the sale of television broadcast rights and tickets to matches. Games' popularity on television is not rising, nor is stadium attendance, said Dmitry Navosha, director of the Sports.ru portal. He said this could signal potential for development of the Russian football market, however.
Football clubs are now only able to make money by training and selling players, said Maxim Belitsky, an independent sports marketing expert. He said more stable salary and transfer funds and investment to create and develop teams' schools would be a first step toward creating genuinely profitable teams.
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