By Alexander Krassimirov
May 26 – The owner of Bulgaria’s Levski Sofia Todor Batkov has hit out at UEFA’s sanctions accusing gas giant Gazprom for failing to deliver on its promised sponsorship. Batkov claims that if the sponsorship had been activated the fine would not have been imposed on the club.
Levski couldn’t meet UEFA FFP requirements due to high transfer fees and player salaries of players. The club was fined €200,000.
“I was one of the promoters for the introduction of financial fair play. On 13 December 2012, me and Ivo Tonev had a meeting with the heads of this major Russian company and reached a clear agreement for sponsorship of Levski with a concrete amount. I told them: ‘I am ready to give you a 30% stake in the club.’ We are still waiting, but nothing happens. Therefore we came under the blows of the financial fair play. We still kept some conversations, the question is open,” said Batkov.
He described the financial situation of Levski as “delicate”. “Currently there is an 8-day delay of one month’s salary to the players from the first team and the backlog of payments of BGN400 000 to other clubs of completed transfers,” he said.
Batkov has held back player wages before, saying he would stop wages until the end of the club’s jubilee season after the club was eliminated from the Cup of Bulgaria, effectively meaning the club would end the season without a trophy.
The president of the Blues does not rule out fans taking a shareholding in the club in a similar scheme that CSKA recently suspended after fans failed to taked up the required amount of shares to take the club to the public markets.
“I am considering providing 10 or 15% of the shares to the groups of organised supporters. CSKA’s idea was good, but failed. Maybe IPO would be successful when the team is stable. There are other forms such as trust supporters’ trusts,” he said.
Batkov said his current focus is on the improvement of the club’s base. “The Ministry of the Interior asked us whether we want to rent land for Rakovsky Stadium and we immediately responded positively. There turf will be replaced and we are going to build an artificial pitch,” said the owner of Levski.
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