Public funding of Russian football clubs : historic formation and implications of the current system

Abstract

Practices of public funding of sports clubs vary across the globe. In large parts of the world, public funding represents only fractions of an otherwise largely privately financed club sport sector. In Russia, public funding acts as the most common scheme. The prevalence of such type of funding launches a chain of unique controversies and has implications for many stakeholders. A scholarly discourse directly related to this topic is virtually non-existent. To help bridge this gap, a systematic historic overview of the formation of the system of club funding in Russia is presented here. By using the ‘soft budget constraints’ approach as a theoretical angle, clubs are clustered into several groups with a subsequent implications analysis. Such comprehensive examination of the funding system is crucial to advance the scholarly discourse, enhances the understanding of Russian professional sport in general and thus lays the ground for future research in this direction.