By Eurohoops Team / info@eurohoops.net
VTB League presented once again the budgets of the Russian teams in the competition and CSKA tops the list with a total budget of 36,5 million euros.
Khimki Moscow with a total budget of 22,7 million euros follows and Lokomotiv Kuban is third with 15,3 million euros of expenses. Those numbers include all the operating costs of the team and not only players’ salaries, still, CSKA remains ahead of the competition both in the VTB League and also in the EuroLeague, even if teams like Fenerbahce Dogus and Real Madrid are not that far from the 30 million mark.
Unics Kazan (12 m. euros) and Zenit St. Petersburg (11,6 m. euros) also spend more than 10 million euros and that makes the VTB United League the richest league in Europe. Avtodor Saratov has a total budget of 2,3 million euros and that’s the smallest number spend by a VTB League Russian club. Still, compared to other European leagues, this is a more than decent budget in order to create a competitive team.
“The VTB United League is still the only competition in Russia, in which clubs fully present their budgets to the public,” said VTB United League honorary president Sergey Ivanov and commented on money spend: “This year the budget of Khimki has considerably increased, the Moscow region team almost caught up with CSKA. What makes me very happy is that CSKA, Unics, Zenit and Lokomotiv Kuban have not received any kind of financial help from local authorities”.
Speaking about the attendance Ivanov stated: “This season the VTB United League received full access to the ticket program of all clubs to track sales statistics. My suspicions were confirmed – we have clubs where half of the attendance is made up of people who do not buy tickets but come to the games for free by invitation. These teams do not want to make money, it’s unprofessional and we will change this”.
Photo: VTB United League