"People need to be given a holiday": the executive director of the RBU on internal starts, attracting sponsors and figure skating

"Sport needs to be combined with some kind of social program"

- Now many sports are faced with a situation where, instead of stages of the Grand Prix and World Cups, they will have to be content with not too popular domestic starts. Where would you start if you wanted to take minor tournaments to the top tier? And is this necessary for the same figure skating, the popularity of which in our country is no lower than that of biathlon?

- If we talk about popularity, figure skating has much higher popularity. To allow the Russian skaters to have a year of downtime, from my point of view, would be completely wrong and offensive. And the absence in the calendar of such starts as a full-fledged Grand Prix series is just that simple. This means that you urgently need to think about what to offer in return. For example, I would try to promote the Russian Cup as an alternative. Moreover, in figure skating, if I am not mistaken, in three disciplines out of four, domestic competition is such that this is essentially the level of the Grand Prix.

It would be logical to at least try not to lose sponsors, but ideally - to bring up new ones, to interest them. Now it is very difficult to find money, and it seems to me that we need to focus not only on the federal level, but above all on the local one. And for this it would be good to hold the stages in large cities, and in the same format as the big championships, with demonstration performances. The audience loves it.

- In order to offer sponsors a product, one must clearly understand what exactly can be given. What would you personally recommend?

- For skiers, for example, this year a very interesting event has appeared - the Ski Tour, in which the entire elite moves from tournament to tournament within a month, starting continuously. It is clear that this cannot be done in figure skating due to the fact that the stages of the Russian Cup are held not even once a week, but less often. But why not think over the format when all the athletes come to the place of the competition as a single landing party? Do they take part in some charity events together, go to museums, go on excursions? That is, the idea is to combine sports with some kind of social program. Such stories are gladly covered and promoted by the press. In addition, you can arrange informal press conferences, autograph sessions, with the help of athletes and coaches to conduct master classes for local children.

I remember when biathlete Tura Berger came to us for some kind of competition, we warned her in advance that the program included a visit to the children's hospice. Our athletes then took this idea rather skeptically. And Tura, before flying to Russia, went to neighbors in her town and asked them to bring toys for sick children and brought two huge bags with her. And their visit to the clinic with Martin Fourcade was received by the Russian media very positively.

- Are you sure that our athletes understand why they might need such activity?

- Firstly, this is a beautiful human story, to which, moreover, the press always reacts. Secondly, any additional promotion of a sport in an unsportsmanlike manner means popularity, potential sponsors, which means additional money, albeit not always direct. Russian figure skaters are top at the world level. If you unite the participants of one or another tournament with a single idea and a well-thought-out, well-organized program, then the landing of such an assault force in any city of our country can become a completely unique and very noticeable event.

- But you won't deny that for the majority of Russian athletes any informal communication is a colossal stress, especially against the background of serious competitions?

- I know this, perhaps better than anyone else, because both biathletes and skiers with whom I have worked are mostly people from small towns, for whom the very arrival in such a metropolis as Moscow is stressful. not to mention press conferences. But athletes must be developed in this direction. For some reason, it turns out that big sport is either victory or death, disaster, the end of life, there is no third choice. While all over the world it is fun, pleasure.

I will never forget how, at the 2016 Biathlon World Championships in Holmenkollen, the Norwegians, on the eve of the men's relay, with the whole team fell on the night broadcast on television. They laughed, joked, communicated with the audience, and won the next day. People should enjoy their own performances, and all events “around sports” only contribute to this. It is clear that we are not talking about loading a person before the start, but if we want to bring our sport to a different level of demand and popularity, an additional accompanying program must be required. Would the same fans refuse the opportunity to become a part of such a holiday, to “touch” their idols? You just can't do the same autograph sessions spontaneously. Sweep away.

- In what sense?

- Alas, live. We had a case when we agreed to hold an autograph session for Fourcade and Anton Shipulin in one of the Adidas branches in a shopping center on Kievskaya. She was scheduled for 12 noon, but already at 10 am the store was tightly blocked by people. The guards turned out to be completely unprepared for such a turn and simply withdrew. Then it took us a lot of effort to get the athletes out of the crowd. But this does not mean that such events cannot be carried out in a more civilized manner.

"We want to debug the mechanism of high-quality broadcasts"

- Are you now working with an eye to the fact that the stages of the Biathlon World Cup will take place?

- Yes, we really count on it. If the competition is canceled, then we will actively promote the Russian Cup. Although such a task is facing the Russian Biathlon Union (RBU) already now, regardless of how the international calendar will be transformed. There is even a special program for this. This is not so easy to do, since the stages are not held in major cities.

- Is it easier to promote figure skating tournaments in this regard?

- Sure. Skaters compete in the stadium and are not affected by any weather conditions. And the same "Izhevsk rifle" - it is almost always -25 ° C. In Tyumen it is possible to organize a television broadcast, to do this in Uvat or Tchaikovsky is more problematic, and sometimes impossible. Therefore, first of all, we want to debug the mechanism of high-quality broadcasts, create a unified format following the example of the International Biathlon Union (IBU). It is clear that at each stage, local operators try to catch their athletes to a greater extent, but the overall picture does not suffer from this, since a single production group is working.

This applies to any sport. It is necessary to strive to develop a single and highest possible standard of the competitions themselves, their organization and coverage. How it is done in the National Basketball Association (NBA). Regardless of whether the matches are held in New York or in some absolute American backwater, fans and journalists receive the same quality product - images, statistics. The same thing happens in the National Hockey League (NHL).

- Perhaps, in figure skating at the stages of the National Cup, it is technically possible to implement the same system for forming the lists of participants that is adopted in the Grand Prix. But there is always a chance that the leader will refer to injury or illness if he thinks that the tournament is not interesting to him. Maybe athletes just need to pay to participate?

- As for the competitions under the auspices of the RBU, I have never been a supporter of the idea of ​​paying athletes only for their participation in the event. And when I worked in skiing, I adhered to the same positions. I remember we held a city sprint in Perm. The organizers paid some crazy money for the arrival of their own stars, who had already completed their careers. It was completely incomprehensible to me. What for? Why not transfer the amount to the prize pool? This is at least fair, and people will seriously fight for this money. Although it is clear that the stars of the level of Fourcade or Daria Domracheva are an exceptional case.

- Was Fourcade the most expensive of the biathlon stars?

- No, Ole Einar Bjoerndalen was more than twice as expensive even in 2014, when he looked far from the same as in his best years.

- The current format of the Russian Cup for figure skaters does not imply prize payments ...

- But does it involve television coverage? Then it is all the more necessary to look for sponsors, to explain to them that if they want to touch a sport with victorious traditions, then here is a chance. There will be no other. Alas, this is how reality appears. In addition, the social program I mentioned is an additional opportunity for local sponsors to find their niche to participate. Let the cities start competing among themselves for the stages. Not being able to "sell" figure skating in a situation where any sneeze of a top skater is snapped up - you need to try.

- How can all these grandiose plans be linked to measures to combat the coronavirus, when there is no guarantee that fans will be allowed into the stands on the same scale?

- In Russia, the viewer is not income, but audience coverage, which can be achieved by any means. For example, use internet broadcasts. You can broadcast live on Instagram or YouTube, in autocinema mode, as concerts are now taking place in Luzhniki. It is clear that during these concerts no one sits in the cars: people bring food and drinks, set improvised tables on the hoods and hang out with companies. This I mean that you can come up with a lot of ideas even with masks, gloves and social distancing. For example, 45 thousand people watched the Russian ski championship in Malinovka thanks to YouTube.

Another issue is that Internet broadcasts must be of very high quality. But figure skating and from this point of view compares favorably with many winter sports. Everything is in front of your eyes, within the ice, in one picture, while in skiing or biathlon, the main events unfold not at the stadium, but somewhere in the forest, and the commentator constantly needs statistics to understand what is happening.

That is, skaters are an ideal topic for all types of broadcasts. Globally speaking, the main task that must now face the organizers of any event is to give people a holiday. Simply holding a competition is boring and interesting, by and large, for a narrow circle of specialists and those who take part in them.