During press conference VTB United League honorary president Sergey Ivanov answered media’s questions.
About VTB League “wages ceiling”
In my opinion, wage ceiling rule adoption is impossible and i said about it before. How can we prevent CSKA, Khimki and Lokomotiv from increasing their budgets? They are financed by private funders. To tell the truth, I’m convinced that strong clubs shouldn’t be limited in some way, thus small teams should strive to become strong. To achieve it small market teams should work to increase their budgets if it is possible. And of course, they shouldn’t take funds from regional budget. Why PARMA and Enisey are the poorest teams? Because they are budgetary. I don’t think that Perm or Krasnoyarsk territory will ever provide 2 billion rubles for a basketball team. In this case these regions’ citizens will complain and will be right. When the team is private, it is shareholder who makes a decision.
About foreign teams’ budgets
League has no right to spread its rules on foreign state territory and demand foreign teams to reveal their budgets. Meanwhile, of course we are aware of Kalev and Astana budgets, and believe me they are much lower than PARMA’s and Enisey’s, but results are better. There is another type of management, another attitude to business. Foreign clubs try to work.
About ticket sales
CSKA profit from ticket sales last season was 113 million of rubles. And do you know who took the second place? VTB League, that was selling tickets for only one game during all season – All-star game. League easily earned 25 millions. Khimki got approximately the same amount, little bit less. And how many home games do they have per year? I’m not even going to speak about other teams. Conclusion: clubs don’t want to earn money from ticket sales or simply incapable of doing it. They don’t care. Except from CSKA. If we got funder’s money than why should we strive?
About World cup 2019 in China
World cup qualification system has been changed and I like it, because the strongest players haven’t participated in that qualification. As it turned out, even in the final part many stars haven’t played. I think that it is so because of the schedule change. World best players do not want to participate in World cup and next year in the Olympics. It’s up to them. No Asia or Africa representative didn’t make top 16 national teams, but Iran and Nigeria qualified the Olympics. As for me, it’s unfair. As of our national team, they obviously did good. Basically, Russian starting five was entirely injured. Coaching staff and players are not to blame, this is our actual level nowadays.
About Russian youth
Veterans were carrying our team on the back during this World cup: Vorontsevich, Kurbanov, Fridzon. I haven’t seen any youth. Where are our young Khryapa, Kirilenko, Shved? There haven’t been any promising players in recent years. Our youth training system doesn’t work good, it has to be changed. And VTB League is not to blame. Herewith, only youth VTB league provide us with relatively promising players. Russian Basketball Super League doesn’t.
About private basketball academies in Russia
We should entirely change children coaches’ work and open such basketball academies as Lokomotiv or, for instance, Ilona Korstin’s basketball academy. This is private paid academy, where high-qualified coaches work with kids. There are pretty affordable prices for Moscow citizens. Kids already go to this academy. There is completely another training system compared to the so-called schools of Olympic reserve. Compare them. I hope this will give us results, and I don’t have any illusions about current academies.
About beer on arenas
I really hope that beer will be returned to the arenas. At least at basketball and hockey games it can be arranged, because its fans are more intellegent. If it happens teams’ funding will grow as well as amount of styrofoams and plastic cups which is good for sport, ecology and BASKETBOTTLE project.
About playoff format changes
We’ve already resorted to drastic changes in playoffs, remember Final 4. Unfortunately or fortunately, depends on your favourite team, result was the same. Theoretically, two-rounded series might make playoffs more unpredictable, in practice – will see. By the way it was FIBA who made us change playoff format. The Olympics will take place in Japan this summer, we have to finish our championship before this event starts.
About All-Star Game 2020
We are always looking for the best options to arrange the All-Star Game.
If Sochi, Saint-Petersburg or Kazan offered us the same conditions that Moscow and VTB Arena did we would accept them. But this is not the case. We were ready to think about Kazan, but only if it would take place on hockey Tatneft Arena that numbers 10 thousand seats. Kazan didn’t accepted this option.
If some city could offer us 15-thousand Arena with required average ticket price we would agree, but there are no offers.
