Why is it necessary to involve companies in cross-country skiing and how to do it. Chronicle of Veronika Stepanova

Let me start with the good. Cross-country skiing is becoming more and more popular, more and more fashionable among the most important target audience – residents of large cities.

We have 30 million people living in Moscow and St. Petersburg with the regions. Of the cities with more than a million, only Rostov-on-Don and Volgograd have no snow (although roller skiing can also be developed there).

Fashion for absolutely everything comes from the capital to big cities and then to small ones. Believe me, I was born and raised in a city of 35,000 people. If they started piercing noses in Moscow, then in a few years they will start with us. Did the metropolitans start skiing in Malevich Park and Meshchersky? So everywhere in Russia they will rise!

Looks like they’re already up. I’m talking about my generation and those who are a bit younger/older.

There are one and a half times more people in mass ski marathons than ten years ago. They say the most popular slot machines sell out months in advance.

New ski stadiums across the country are being built or renovated. Somewhere simpler, somewhere world class, but they build it. I’ve been to a dozen and a half places in a year – and everywhere there are changes for the better since my last visit. There is movement. I like that local bosses come and ask directly: “What should be done to make next year better?” As it was in Chusovoy, for example.

Another example? The head of the Moscow Ski Competition Federation, Vyacheslav Vedenin, told me the other day that at the last children’s competitions an unprecedented number of participants ran. I heard something similar from Kamchatka.

Everything goes, everything develops. An important step remains to be taken: truly attracting companies to our sport.

Let me repeat what I said recently from the stage at an event where the audience was half businessmen, half the country’s top skiers, current and former.

Children’s sports and, to some extent, amateur sports are the responsibility of the state. Professional athletes are forced to seek out contacts with sponsors and increasingly turn to corporate funding. It won’t be quick, but it’s true, we have to get there.

There are some great people in our sport who are already spending money on pro skiing and supporting specific skiers. Their names are known to everyone in the party, but they are modest people and I don’t need to mention them.

But they are still patrons, if I understand correctly. Their business interests are hardly connected with us, they don’t make money on skis.

This, by the way, is very Norwegian – they showed me such a modest man on the highway: “Look, among the top ten of our billionaires. The plane gives us its own, when necessary. He just doesn’t like his name being mentioned. There was also a funny case in the same place in Norway: the contest organizers forgot to capture something important in the village of Lyusebotn, they just forgot. But they didn’t know who to call – and a local ski racing patron rushed the forgotten man on his high-speed VIP yacht.

In general, the bosses are great people, but there is one problem: today they help cross-country skiing, and tomorrow, conditionally, they will switch to curling.

We must look for those for whom our sport will be at least partly a business. Who will be interested in ski racing to win.

I’ve said it more than once, and I’ll say it again here: anything related to the interaction between business and professional sport interests me as a future career. Therefore, I try to penetrate and listen to potential sponsors. Here is what I caught.

If a business is looking to profit from advertising goods through sports, it relies on high-quality media coverage. What they write and how they write in the newspapers or on the websites does not affect anyone – it is in the understanding of the sponsor and not of the media in general. Everyone is interested in where and how much our races will be shown on TV. Not so much the races themselves, but the start, the finish and the rewards. In this sense, everything was worked at the World Cup: when she won, she showed her skis / poles in the frame (not the ones she ran on, but the “prizes” specially located at the starting line arrival) – she gave a flawless interview against the backdrop of a booth with sponsor logos. I think this grandstand is the most important element of the Cup, it is carefully transported from stage to stage.

A philanthropist can afford to spend money simply because he wants to – he earns elsewhere. Business needs a plan and results.

Now everything is pre-calculated and calculated. A sponsor wants to know exactly how many pairs of eyes their logo or product will see per month. And he tries to calculate what “positive image changes” such advertising will bring him. And when asked during negotiations where your main tournament of the season will be broadcast and in what volume, I can only shrug my shoulders and admit that I have no idea yet. Naturally, a potential sponsor thinks: “Well, the KPI is usually incomprehensible here – we better put our logo on the biathlete’s jacket, everything is clear with the TV there and you can calculate the effect.” This is the actual situation in the fall of last year. We parted without offense, agreeing to meet again when the parameters were clear. And what can resentment be? My social networks give, conditionally, a hundred thousand views, and gives millions, and even in video format.

… We have been developing a system for years: regional competitions, playoffs, junior team, main, international competitions for the strongest. Of the last of us now survived. But it’s certainly not a tragedy for our sport – it’s more the winds of change that have blown.

My vision for where we are now as an active professional athlete is to come together, think about how to grow, and start moving forward together, in new ways. Something new for everyone: businesses, media, federations, athletes. Only then will we find a formula that will suit everyone.