A year after World Cup, Russia toasts big crowds

MOSCOW — A year after hosting the World Cup, Russia is boasting the biggest club soccer crowds since Soviet days and participation at the amateur level is on the rise. Still, there are signs of trouble for the sport.

Fans are concerned about efforts to bring tight World Cup security measures to domestic games, and the shiny new arenas attracting fans can be a financial burden for the state.

There’s a big rise in the number of Russians playing amateur soccer or sending their children to academies. That includes a spike in interest in women’s soccer, though the women’s World Cup in France is all but invisible in Russian media.

BIGGER CROWDS

New arenas and the afterglow of the World Cup helped raise average Russian Premier League attendances to 16,817 per game for the 2018-19 season. That’s the most since 1989, when Russian clubs made up less than half of the old Soviet top league.

Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia is the poster child for Russia’s soccer resurgence with over 31,000 people on average at its home games.

“People went to see games during the World Cup and they liked the atmosphere. They’re trying to relive it with the Premier League games and this of course is part of the legacy,” Alexander Zotov, the CEO of Russia’s main players’ union, told The Associated Press.

However, there’s still a long way to go to match Europe’s big soccer nations. Russia still ranks between the Scottish and Dutch leagues on average attendance, despite having a far larger population than either.

There are also signs that the novelty may be wearing off in smaller cities. Of the 11 World Cup stadiums used for league games, all but three posted average attendances below 50 percent of capacity this season.

The worst figures come from second-tier teams like FC Sochi, which attracted just 3,948 people per game to its 47,000-seat Fisht Olympic Stadium, and Baltika Kaliningrad with 5,912 in a 35,212-capacity arena.

Most stadiums are being supported with government money to cover their costs under a World Cup legacy program.

SECURITY DILEMMAS

Russian security forces neutralized violent and racist elements in its soccer fan base at last year’s World Cup, and they’ve largely stayed out of sight since.

That involved a battery of new security measures, from more cameras at stadiums, to more shadowy methods like “preventive chats” with security services that led some hardcore fans to believe they’d be arrested if they stayed in Russia during the tournament.

The most visible, however, was the Fan ID system — a government-issue ID card mandatory for any fan attending a game. A few thousand Russian fans with prior convictions, even if they weren’t for footballrelated reasons, reported being barred.

Russia is now considering extending that to club games, which has prompted protests from fans.