Roman Abramovich’s purchase of London’s Chelsea in 2003 ushered in an amazing era when big Russian businessmen massively invested in professional sports clubs around the world, most often the clubs were football and European. However, the wave of interest in sports assets began to decline even before the 2020 pandemic, and the 2022 sanctions finally forced out investors with Russian passports. Only a few managed to keep their clubs.
Club: Monaco, France
Dmitry Rybolovlev turned his attention to football after he sold his stake in Uralkali for $5 billion in 2010-2011. Shortly thereafter, he moved to Monaco and bought a 66.67% stake in a local club the second division of the championship of France, for a symbolic sum of €1.
After that, Rybolovlev invested about $200 million in the development of Monaco, returned the club to the leaders of the French Ligue 1, bought world stars and sold Killian Mbappe to Paris Saint-Germain for a record €180 million. Rybolovlev also helped Russian football: after the 2018 World Cup Monaco bought Alexander Golovin from CSKA Moscow for a record $30 million for domestic players.
A distinctive feature of Monaco during the time of Rybolovlev is the Russian management of the club: from 2013 to 2019, Vadim Vasiliev was vice president and general director, and until February 2023, Oleg Petrov. Now the second person after the 56-year-old Rybolovlev in Monaco is his daughter Ekaterina Sartori Rybolovleva, and the son-in-law of businessman Juan Sartori represents the club in European organizations.
Ivan Savvidi
Club: PAOK (Greece)
The owner of Donskoy Tabak, Ivan Savvidi, began to actively invest in Greek companies even before he received the passport of this country. Thessaloniki became the center of his activity, and in 2012 he became the owner of PAOK, the most popular football club in the city.
This was not the first attempt by Savvidi to enter the football business: in 2002-2005 he was the president of the Rostov club, and in 2006-2008 he headed the Rostov SKA. But if in Rostov-on-Don football was a social burden for Savvidi, then in Greece the businessman really got carried away: he paid €9 million of the club’s long-term debts and contributed another €9.95 million to its capital. Over the next four years, Savvidi’s investment amount in PAOK reached €81.9 million, and his stake in the club increased to 82.8%.
Fans adored the new boss: they came to the club’s matches with his portraits and called God from Russia. True, the club from Thessaloniki managed to win the championship under Savvidi only once – in the 2018/2019 season. Olympiacos, Panathinaikos, and AEK Athens were PAOK’s main rivals, and regularly topped the standings. Savvidi, in response, made loud statements about corruption in the Greek Football Federation, and once became a defendant in a criminal case.
In the winning season for PAOK, the match of the team from Thessaloniki against AEK was interrupted when the referee did not count the goal of PAOK, and an outraged crowd ran onto the field, including Savvidi. Later, witnesses claimed that he threatened the referee Georgos Kominis, while holding on to a holster with a pistol, and then went to fight with the president of the AEK club. After that, the Greek Football Federation suspended the championship for 20 days, and Savvidi was banned from visiting stadiums for three years. Four years after the incident, a Greek court sentenced the 64-year-old businessman to 25 months in prison on probation, which, however, does not prevent him from remaining the owner and president of PAOK.
Anton Zingarevich
Club: Botev (Bulgaria)
The son of Forbes list member Boris Zingarevich, while still studying in the UK, became interested in the football business, and in 2004 tried to buy Everton Liverpool for 20 million pounds. Then the deal fell through, but after 8 years, Zingarevich Jr. nevertheless got his own club – he bought half the shares of the more modest Reading. True, already in 2014 he sold his share to Thai businessmen.
In 2021, Lucid Football Holdings, owned by Anton Zingarevich, acquired a 99% stake in the Botev club from the Bulgarian Plovdiv and now it owns four teams in different countries at once (Ghana, Nigeria, Denmark and Bulgaria), in addition, it owns the rights to more than 2000 footballers from Africa and South America.
“Personally, I look at football as a business. And in Russia, playing football from a business point of view, if you are not an agent, is quite difficult, ”Anton Zingarevich explained in an interview with SE why he bought a club in Bulgaria and not in Russia.
Dmitry Punin
Club: Karmiotissa (Cyprus)
If in the previous two decades the news about which of the participants in the Forbes list wants to buy which English club was constantly discussed, now the deals look more modest. Most of the Russian owners appeared in the clubs of Cyprus, where the Russian-speaking diaspora makes up about 6% of the total population of the country, and about 40,000 Russians live in Limassol, 150,000. It is not surprising that two clubs owned by Russian businessmen are based in this city at once.
One is Karmiotissa, which was acquired in 2022 by Dmitry Punin, the owner of the Punin Wine alcohol distribution company and the former head of the Pin Up betting company. So far, his most high-profile actions as the owner of a football club were the invitation to the post of head coach of the team of the former Zenit forward and the Russian national team Alexander Kerzhakov (in February 2023) and the subsequent dismissal with a scandal (already in April). Kerzhakov accused the owner of starting to interfere in the work and during one of the matches he himself came to the locker room and gave instructions on who should be replaced, as well as in non-payment of the due compensation upon dismissal.
Sergey Lomakin
Clubs: Paphos (Cyprus), Riga (Latvia)
In 2021, the name of the creator of the Modis, CenterObuv and Fix Price projects Sergey Lomakin flashed in the news about the possible purchase of the famous French club Saint-Etienne. If the deal had gone through, it would have been the fourth club in Lomakin’s collection: in addition to the Moscow Rodina, the billionaire owns the Latvian Riga and the Cypriot Paphos. Lomakin also at various times showed interest in acquiring the Khimki and Torpedo clubs – but both times it did not come to a purchase.
The club from Riga turned out to be the most successful: it won the championship of its country three times and the national cup once. In March 2022, the Latvian Football Federation demanded guarantees from Riga that the club would have enough money to participate in the championship if sanctions were imposed against Lomakin, but the club was able to prove that its current sources of funding are not directly related to the Russian owner and continued speaking.
Evgeny Savin
Club: “Krasava – Yeni Ypsonas” (Cyprus)
In May 2022, a successful blogger and former player of Tom, Ural, Khimki and Arsenal left Russia. Together with him, Savin took the Krasava football club, created in December 2020 and making its first debut in Russian football in the championship of the second division of the FNL in the 2021/22 season, out of the country.
In Cyprus, Krasava merged with the already existing second division team Yeni Ypsonas, and now plays under the name FC Krasava – Eny Ypsonas.
“This is the only club in the history of Cypriot football that has moved to the island and preserved its history, and is not just an investor. The philosophy will remain the same, and we will give young guys from all over the former CIS the opportunity to develop, now in Europe, without discussing what kind of passport someone has,” Savin said on social networks about his project.
