Sergey Kushchenko, General Director of the professional basketball team TsSKA, has turned his team into a super-star team on par with the European clubs in only two years. His dream is to make basketball more popular in Russia than soccer or hockey and to create world-class players and coaches

Elena Borisova

A sports team that could become the best in Europe has appeared in Russia for the first time over the last two decades: the TsSKA basketball team. For two years running, the team has reached the finals of the most prestigious championship, the Euro-league ULEB final four. The playoffs decide which team is the strongest of the 2003/04 season in Europe after two matches, a semi-final and a final. Thanks to a new head coach and a new general director, today’s TsSKA has become a basketball machine capable of defeating any rival.

- Just a few years ago, few thought that Russian sports would need managers…
- Yes, it’s a completely new profession. In the Soviet era, the big sports were hockey, soccer, figure skating, basketball in the seventies, and occasionally boxing. But it was like a “party” sport. Accordingly, it did not need any management. Later, in 1991-1994, sport teams suffered huge losses. The economy kept going somehow but there were no sports at all. All the coaches went abroad. Stadiums were turned into outdoor markets. Children born 1984-1989 didn’t care about sports at all. But we should have caught them when they were eight, saying “Wow you are tall! And your dad is tall! You’ve got long arms and straight legs. Come play basketball. Don’t start smoking or drinking.” But nobody had the time or energy to do this. Where did this child go? He went around the corner to smoke or do something else stupid. Today, everybody is saying, “Where are our Russian players?” I answer: they will come, but a bit later. Today, in the context of a stable economy, we are beginning to realize and recall gradually that sports are great and their revival has started.
In 2001-2004, investment in sports increased so much that the profession of sports manager became serious. Large companies have taken an interest in sports. These companies need or want to support their communities. Once they completed their primary accumulation of capital, they began supporting sports teams. And then, once a team is successful, it earns money from sales.
- Selling what?
- Success. For example, a team wins a city championship. It’s good luck that should be sold consciously. A manager starts earning money for the team. He goes to see the director of an enterprise that hasn’t invested in the team and says, “Look, the city mayor comes to our games. You see? Don’t you want to help our project?” The director answers, “Well, if you get me a seat close to the mayor, I’m ready to help you.” After that, the team gets a better bus and better uniforms, and the coach gets some assistants. The team goes to new competitions and wins a provincial championship. Good results again. And then, the manager has to market all this as a brand name. He has to invent new packages and go to a bigger company saying, “The governor comes to our games. Don’t you want to buy a seat next to him? You’ll sit the whole season next to the governor in the VIP box. I’ll take care of everything for you. I can get you this and this.”
- Did you promote your first team, Perm Ural-Great, this way?
- Yep. When in 1999 I was President of the Ural-Great team and entered the stadium to see a crowd of 7,500, who wanted excitement and wins, I realized that this had to be handled in a professional manner. Everything should run like a business and a company structure should be set up. You have meals and a room for children. If you come with children who can’t sit in the stands, leave them in the children’s room to play with toys. Leave your phone number and support your team. You could win 15,000 or 30,000 rubles. You can meet our announcer Oskar Kuchera or the players. You can have your picture taken with them and get an autograph – anything you want. It’s a show.
- What do these shows of yours have to do with sports? Are they really necessary?
- Let’s imagine there is no show. You would buy a ticket for thirty rubles, come and see a slow basketball game or maybe even a really good game, and then you would go away.  That’s it. Only those who love basketball come simply to see a game. There might be a thousand of them. I need people who have nothing to do with basketball. I need a spectator who would come and say, “Tomorrow, I’ll bring my girlfriend or my children to see this!” I want the spectator to be bitten by the basketball bug.  Have you seen pockemons? Why did such a bizarre animal become so popular? We should shout bravo to the manager who made them popular. This manager could make people love a crocodile because he has a managerial talent. We have a high-quality and intelligent game that is not very popular for the time being. So, we have to push it. In the year we first performed our show, the Euro-league changed the regulations and required each team to do a pre-game show. And they do it – each in their own way. We do our shows ourselves. My guys and our friends think them up. Sometimes, I dream these ideas. For example, once I dreamt of making basketball lines luminescent. We put down special tape, turned out the lights, and directed ultraviolet lamps at them, so that the whole court began to shine with the logo of TsSKA. The audience went wild. Everyone went nuts. Once I invited really fat girls instead of skinny ones as cheerleaders. The Italian coach laughed the whole first quarter of the match. Luzhkov liked it, too.
I can’t say that such tricks always draw people in, but they are very useful. Sometimes we make a video devoted to a coach or our fans. There are also things that unite everyone. I consider the final of the Northern league in Perm a brilliant idea. You know that song, “It’s my life?” The video involves a thumping heart. It pulses and pounds. I took part of the song and made the heartbeat longer. I worked secretly so that the players didn’t know and recorded each player’s children saying, “Daddy, you play best of all.” One player’s pregnant wife said, “I expect you to win.” The team played in the final versus Zalgiris. They were standing on a bench before the match, and here came the song with the heartbeat and the children. We beat them by eight points.
- What difficulties did you face in turning basketball into a business?
- I have the crazy dream of beating soccer nationwide and in Europe. Look, today Beckham scores a goal and all the newspapers write about it for a month. We watch his braid on all the European channels and hear, “Beckham scored a goal with a header!” And we read a tiny article about basketball in the same newspaper…I’m not happy about this. We need to win and gain an audience –in Moscow for the time being. That’s why Utah Jazz and TsSKA will face off in Moscow, and the final four – the final of the coolest teams in basketball – will take place next season in Moscow as well. A sports channel has been set up. The President likes sports. He is an athlete himself. The Russian sports’ stock is on the rise. All these factors should be taken advantage of. We should cling to them and go improve our quality, train players, and win the European Cup.
- Today, Serbian Dushan Ivkovich is your head coach. Why did you hire a foreigner?
- As I already said, the whole point is the sports “hole” of the early nineties. We don’t have good coaches for the time being, or rather, there are two or three of them but they didn’t have playing experience, just like Russian players lack it. While in Yugoslavia, Lithuania, and Spain they practiced and are practicing on a constant basis and in a professional manner. So, we thought if we hire a coach, he has to be the best. And we hired the best, but there was virtually no place to train. When we came here, there was nothing except bare walls and pulled-out sockets. We restored everything, including the sockets and the locker rooms. Today, we have a fitness room, a bath for cooling off after a game and an ice machine. We have all the latest achievements in sports medicine and all sorts of rehabilitation things after injuries. We manage to recover from injuries in a week at the longest, knock on wood.  We have a staff of skilled doctors. Recently, we took bids for a uniform contract to the tune of half a million a year, which was awarded to Nike.
- Sergei, who is responsible for relationships on the team?
- The team captain, the coach and me. This work has to be done properly – there are twelve souls that need to turn into one. They are people with different mentalities: Americans, Yugoslavs, Greeks, and Russians. They are all different. And if there is even the slightest rumor that a person could spoil the team, it’s better not to hire him no matter how great a player he might be. If he is a bad person, not a team-player, he can’t stay. Apart from boring stats, such as games played and points scored, we are also interested in the player’s relationships on his former team. But the most important thing is to pick people who love to play.  

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