By David Gold
June 7 – Diarmuid Crowley, a speaker at this month’s Inside World Football Moscow Forum and Senior Vice-President of global sports, fashion and media organisation IMG, believes Russia is in a better position to take advantage of hosting the World Cup than last year’s hosts South Africa were.
“Russia has a great opportunity,” said Crowley.
“In South Africa where the domestic league is not as popular as the Russian league, the stadiums were never going to be used to their maximum potential after the World Cup
“Russia has a sustainable football league which can grow to fill these venues, and their position is closer to Germany in that respect, when they hosted the World Cup in 2006.”
The point is underlined by the improvement in the fortunes of Russian sides in the European Champions League, with CSKA Moscow and Zenit St. Petersburg winning the UEFA Cup and Europa League in 2005 and 2008 respectively.
IMG worked with design specialists Populous on Wembley stadium, a project Crowley was keen to emphasise had been a tremendous success commercially, particularly following last week’s Champions League final.
“Last week’s Champions League Final showed Wembley Stadium at its very best.
“To then turn the stadium around for another sell-out event less than 48 hours later was remarkable.
The IMG Senior Vice President also emphasised the importance of bringing together the commercial and design aspects of building a new stadium to ensure success.
“It is important to have a holistic approach; having your commercial partner, operator and architect working hand in hand during the design and construction phase to make sure what is built is commercially and operationally efficient and meets design needs too.
“What is often forgotten is the commercial side; a firm of architects will design a venue and only at that point are commercial entities brought in to maximise revenues.
” The challenge for Russia 2018 is to get the three elements together i.e. design, operations and commercial potential from the beginning to ensure the stadium is subsequently appropriate for the club that takes over the management and operation of the venue after the tournament.”
For more details on the Inside World Football Moscow Forum, please click here.
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