Spartak Moscow fans would jump at the chance to buy shares in the People’s Club and run it, as is being discussed in fan forums, one of their top representatives told RIA Novosti on Wednesday.
Analysts are calling for oil billionaire Leonid Fedun to offer a sizeable stake in Spartak to their fans to mimick the ownership structure of Spanish giants Barcelona and Real Madrid, and put meaning behind their nickname as the People's Club.
“We’ve been prepared for a long time to buy shares, both the fan club and the fans. We’re ready to take part in the running of the club to the greatest extent possible,” fan club director Oleg Semyonov said..
“The fans will buy these shares with their rubles, just like they buy tickets for the matches.”
Pyotr Aven, the chairman of Alfa Bank, one of Russia’s top investment banks, and a well-known Spartak fan, sparked the debate Tuesday with comments to Sovetsky Sport newspaper that the club “should not have one owner.”
Aven said the club should be floated on the stock exchange with a controlling stake reserved for fans "to make the team really a People's Club."
Aven was one of Boris Yeltsin's economic ministers in the early 1990s.
There was no immediate reaction from Spartak.
Spartak are known as the People’s Club because they were created by early Soviet trade unions and had looser links to the government than the KGB-affiliated Dynamo Moscow or CSKA Moscow, the army club.
Spartak won nine league titles between 1992 and 2011, but has not won a trophy since the Russian Cup in 2003, Fedun’s first season at the club, and has gone through nine coaches in that time.
