An industry of youth and vigor

Nowadays, it is extremely risky to say that the European Soccer Championship, which Ukraine and Poland will host in 2012, is still a long way off. Every sports-related sector of the economy must start working right now to promote our country’s readiness to meet this red-letter sports date.

According to Valerii Sushkevych, president of the association Sports Industry of Ukraine, Ukraine’s sports industry is still in its infancy, although sales of sporting goods have already reached a billion dollars and is expected to rise by an estimated 20 percent by year’s end. Meanwhile, the worldwide market of sporting goods is about 100 billion dollars. In other words, Ukraine accounts for a paltry one percent of this market.

Not all the players in the national sports market are novices. The government of Finland has been ordering simulators from the Dnipropetrovsk-based company Vasil. Experts claim that the quality of this Ukrainian product is about the same as foreign brands but much cheaper. The optimal price-quality ratio makes Ukrainian brands popular both at home and abroad. Sushkevych also shares this view. “The Ukrainian producer is already exporting,” he notes.

Viktor Korzh, Minister for Families, Youth, and Sports, believes that the current stage of physical training and sports in Ukraine provides a clear way out of the decline. “We managed to stop the closure of sports schools for children and teenagers. We are building new facilities, including four ice arenas and planning to build eight more,” Korzh says, adding that he has proposed increasing his ministry’s budget from UAH 900 million to UAH 1.83 billion.

But even these funds are not enough to meet the needs of this sector. “An up-to-date network of sports facilities is being established with funds from the state budget. But we know that we won’t be able to make a breakthrough simply with funds from the central and local budgets because we have lost too much time and are facing some very serious problems. So we are making every effort to improve our relations with business,” says Korzh.

In any case, as the prime movers in the sports market note, the “dark nineties” have passed and a revival is underway. “This is an example of a new sector of the national economy burgeoning right before our eyes. You don’t see this every day,” says Valerii Pekar, president of the Euroindex Company.