These players all have one thing in common: this logo
-- even though he plays on a team in Germany
and they play for a team in Russia.
It’s also on this team in Serbia, at games in England, and on sidelines in Italy.
The logo belongs to Gazprom, a Russian natural gas company.
Logo sponsorships are normal in soccer:
Teams make money offering jersey space to sponsors selling things like credit cards,
cars and cell phones.
But Gazprom isn’t like most sponsors: private companies with products soccer fans can buy.
Instead, it’s a company owned by the Russian government that makes money selling natural
gas to foreign countries.
Yet, it’s everywhere in European soccer.
So, if soccer fans can’t buy what they’re selling,
why is Gazprom spending millions to sponsor soccer games?
The answer is part of a larger story that’s changing the sport of soccer.
Foreign countries using companies they own to burnish their reputations abroad,
and to understand why Russia is involved, you need to look at a map.
Russia has the world’s largest natural gas reserves and most of them
are located in Arctic gas fields controlled by Gazprom.
The company is led by Alexey Miller, a close ally of Vladimir Putin.
Since 2005, the Russian government has owned a majority stake in Gazprom.
Meaning company profits are under Putin’s control and gas sales, along with oil,
account for around 40% of Russia’s annual budget.
This map shows how dependent various European countries are on Russian gas and you can see
that Eastern European countries are more dependent than countries further west.
At the end of the 20th century, Germany represented the biggest opportunity for Gazprom.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder had announced plans to phase out coal and nuclear power,
which meant Germany would need more natural gas to maintain their energy supply.
Gazprom wanted to get it to them, but there was a problem.
To get to Germany, Russia’s gas needed pass to through pipelines
crossing countries charging Gazprom transport fees.
And most of them went through Ukraine
a country that has a complicated relationship with Russia.
Today, Ukraine still charges Russia $2-3 billion dollars every year to pump gas through to Europe.
So, starting back in 2005, Russia began working on a strategy to bypass Ukraine
and ship their gas directly to Western Europe.
This is the Nord Stream pipeline
a route through The Baltic Sea straight to Northern Germany.
In late 2005, Gazprom was in the final stages of financing the project
and Germany’s chancellor was preparing for an election.
During his time in office, Gerhard Schroeder had become friendly with Putin and critics
in Germany were increasingly concerned about the Russian leader’s growing influence.
Just a few weeks before the election, Schroeder met with Putin
to sign an agreement officially approving the pipeline.
Two months later, Schroeder lost his re-election but by March he had found a new job:
overseeing Gazprom's pipeline to Germany.
It also came out that, before leaving office, Schroeder had approved a secret Gazprom loan
that provided over a billion euros to finance the project.
Soon, the story of Gazprom’s big project in Germany was becoming a story of scandal,
corruption, and the creeping influence of Russia.
But then the story changed.
In 2006, Gazprom signed a deal to sponsor the German soccer team FC Schalke 04.
At the time, Schalke’s finances were worrying team officials and Gazprom’s sponsorship
provided money the team desperately needed.
At a press conference announcing the deal, a Gazprom chairman said Schalke’s connections
with the German energy sector were why they decided to become their sponsor.
Schalke plays in Gelsenkirchen - a town in Germany’s Ruhr Valley, where much of the
country's energy industry is based.
It's also close to the town of Rehden, a hub for pipelines to the rest of Europe and home
to Western Europe's largest natural gas storage facilities.
Schalke wasn’t Gazprom’s first soccer deal.
The year before, they had bought a controlling stake in a team on the other end of the
Nord Stream route: the Russian team Zenit St. Petersburg.
Gazprom’s investment made Zenit a major force in soccer.
Two years after taking control, Zenit won their first-ever league championship.
They’ve been able to sign expensive foreign stars, like Belgian midfielder Axel Witsel
and the Brazilian forward Hulk,
and Gazrpom uses Zenit for marketing stunts:
like having players scrimmage on the side of their offshore gas platform.
In 2006, as Gazprom logos were revealed around Schalke’s stadium, German headlines were
hailing the Russian gas giant for pumping millions into the German team.
To celebrate the deal, Schalke’s new jersey was unveiled in a ceremony before Schalke
and Zenit played a friendly match in Russia.
And, over the next few years, the Gazprom logo would become a team symbol displayed
at Schalke games and printed on official merchandise.
Schalke also won a championship in 2011 and by then, Nord Stream had been completed, and that year,
Gerhard Schroeder, Angela Merkel and other European officials gathered to celebrate
as it began pumping gas to Germany.
There was also another struggling team whose jerseys started featuring Gazprom’s logo:
The Serbian team Red Star Belgrade.
Red Star was about 25 million dollars in debt when Gazprom signed to become their jersey sponsor.
And, again, there was also another pipeline: The South Stream would have bypassed Ukraine
by going directly through Serbia to Southern Europe.
That project closed in 2014, but Gazprom has continued increasing their access to Europe
by building Nord Stream 2, a second pipeline doubling the amount of gas
flowing from Russia to Germany.
Gazprom has also expanded their soccer empire to include energy partnerships with Chelsea
football club, Champions League and the sport’s most famous tournament: the FIFA World Cup.
These sponsorships have made Gazprom’s logo familiar not just to fans in Europe,
but across the world.
“We light up the football. Gazprom. Official partner."
It’s in commercials before games, and on jerseys and sidelines once it starts.
FC Schalke fans have also started to see Nord Stream 2 ads at home games.
And, while climate activists like Greenpeace have staged protests to point out Gazprom’s
threat to Arctic resources, Gazprom had no trouble renewing their sponsorships.
Now, Russia controls nearly half the gas consumed by Europe
and other countries are learning from their example.
Etihad, Emirates, and Qatar Airways all are owned by sovereign states in the Middle East
with interests that go beyond selling airline tickets.
As the example of Gazprom shows, having a prominent soccer sponsorship offers a way
around bad publicity by winning approval on the field.
If you’re a fan, that can feel like a big opportunity: their money helps teams win major tournaments,
but it’s starting to change the sport itself.
Now that it’s become common to see a Serbian team sponsored by Russia’s gas company facing
off against a French team sponsored by Dubai’s state-owned airline, it’s starting to seem
like the field is hosting two competitions at once:
A match between two teams,
and a larger play for foreign influence that continues long after the final whistle.