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Although the Europa League plan planned by European football teams collapsed within 48 hours, the failed measure once again highlighted the important role of one of the Champions League sponsors, Russian gas giant Gazprom, in European football. The behemoth is hardly motivated by a love of football, and the sponsorship may have something to do with the company gaining a foothold in the Balkans.
special sponsor
Cars, soft drinks, financial services, sporting goods and sometimes beer – the main sponsors of sporting events are often consumer goods companies, which can rightly hope that toxic advertising will bring in investment and increase sales. Europe’s most popular sport, football – and the Champions League, which attracts the most viewers – is also sponsored by companies in direct contact with consumers, but there is one exception. Namely, Russia’s Gazprom, which does not sell gas or oil directly to any TV viewer, but still spends billions on TV advertising and team sponsorship.
Teams at home and around the world
By the way, Gazprom not only sponsors Russian teams, like the most successful Hungarian club, Zenit in St. Petersburg, but also has a presence abroad. In Germany, for example, the Schalke 04 player from Gelsenkirchen proudly (?) wears the capital G on his shirts. And we see a miracle: cooperation in sponsorship began a decade and a half ago, just as Germany and Russia began building the gas stream, Nord Stream 1, which connects directly between the two countries. In the Balkans, Crvena Zvezda, one of Belgrade’s favorites, is promoting the Russian giant and, needless to say, the Russians are already in the country through Gazprom, as is the oil giant Naftna Industrja Srbije (NIS).
Image deterioration
And why? One of the goals is to improve the deteriorating image of the country and the company, since professionals have long proven that advertising has a powerful effect on the subconscious, and no one will immediately become a believer in Putin if he watches the advertisement of Gazprom fifty times a year and sees his favorite players of his team. Playing in the jersey called Gazprom, but the presence of the logo – at least among those who do not deal with Russian domestic and foreign policy on a daily basis – will certainly improve something in the perception of the company and Russia.
Improving Gazprom’s image was necessary only because the company’s name was significantly reduced in the 2006-2009 “gas wars” with Ukraine. The company, which is very close to the Kremlin, signed its first major sponsorship deal with the Champions League in 2012, and according to European polls five to six years ago, 51 percent of those surveyed believe Gazprom is a reliable Russian energy supplier. The choice of BL was by no means accidental: the matches were watched by about 300 million people in two hundred countries.
Another goal may be that while the 2014 Russian aggression against Ukraine, the brutal action against the opposition and the foreign actions of Russian intelligence – among others, the 2018 assassination in southern England, and the 2019 Berlin assassination, in which a Chechen activist was involved. , Zlemhan Hangosvili, lost his life – traditional diplomatic channels are shrinking, and Russia can maintain a less exciting but effective path. This is because the sponsorship is accompanied by the organization of various events in the hostel of VIPs in the stadiums from the amounts paid by the sponsors, in addition to various influential economic and political actors, there may also be representatives of the sponsoring companies. One of these informal meetings and conversations is a great opportunity to lobby and “soften” senior decision makers.
Gazprom douche
A very important development in this regard was that Gazprom no longer had a ticket in the Premier League for two days, and the main sponsor was the American investment bank JP Morgan, which was to launch the micro-league in the end with US dollars. 6 billion capital injection.
It was planned that JP Morgan would provide most of the money as a loan, and the teams would repay the loan to the financial institution in annual installments of $264 million.
By the way, it is not yet known how long Gazprom will remain a sponsor of BL: the contract was extended for three years in 2015 and 2018, and there is no news yet whether a 2024 cooperation agreement will be reached this year.
Many – and not only for political reasons – oppose the existence of Gazprom: for example, environmental organizations that do not forgive the company for its participation in the exploration and production of hydrocarbons in the Arctic.
