With the amount of global sports events coming in the nearest future, the industry is tracking the situation with the possible stadium prohibition abolishment.
At the meeting with football officials and fans the Russian prime-minister Vladimir Putin in January 2012 said that the ban on drinking beer at stadiums can be cancelled. The reason is the rules of FIFA that the government should follow due to the agreement on 2018.
Some of the sports official also spoke in favor of bringing beer stands and alcohol brands back to football arenas. The president of the Russian Football Union Sergey Fursenko estimates that selling beer would let Russian clubs make extra $5 mln per year.
The minister of sports, tourism and youth policy Vitaly Mutko commented that the prime-minister simply had answered the question asked by one of the football supporters. Mr. Mutko thinks that there's too much speculation about beer and sports, while the Russian stadiums and events have a lot of problems that are much more important.
In 2008 as a member of the parliament Vitaly Mutko suggested to let breweries place their advertisement at stadiums and show their commercials on TV during matches. The beer sponsors were not supposed to promote themselves only at youth competitions. 15% of the money spent by the alcohol manufactures was to be used on youth sports development programs. But the law was not approved.
The Russian medics strongly oppose such suggestions. The public health and social development minister Tatyana Golikova and the head of the Consumer protection service Gennady Onischenko have already criticized the idea.
But the parliament will have to come back to the issue as the company Anheuser-Busch InBev (Budweiser) is one the sponsors of the FIFA World Cup – 2018.
