Rinat Akhmetov, owner of Shakhtar Donetsk football club, in a great piece of PR, has offered to buy out all of the tickets for Wednesday's vitally important Ukraine-Greece second leg World cup qualifying match, to be played in Shakhtar's new stadium.
After yesterday's no-score draw in Greece, the result of this one game will decide whether it will be Ukraine or Greece that go to next year's World Cup football finals in South Africa.
The stupidly greedy Ukrainian Football Association has whacked up the prices for the match by so much there is a real possibility that the stadium could be half empty for this 'do or die' game.
If Akhmetov succeeds in his bid, he will put the tickets on sale at normal European club tournament match prices, at a loss of over $1m to his club.
No wonder he is so popular in Donbas. And if Ukraine do win, it will be Akhmetov and his Party of Regions' colleagues that will parade on the pitch before the nation's TV viewers to be reflected in the glory...And good luck to them..
Monday update... The Ukrainian Football Federation has declined Rinat Akhmetov's offer - as a a result the vital World Cup eliminator match may well be poorly attended. No home team likes to play in half-empty stadiums, and it makes no business sense either..
Why doesn't he hand out the money for the difference directly to the people?
ReplyDeleteAkhmetov, who stole everything fair and square, as part of Kuchmism/Party of Regions mafia, is worth well over a billion dollars.
The Party of Regions, in the ads for presidential candidate Yanukovych, also claims that it "takes care of" (meaning jobs, etc) a lot of people in the silly Donbass.
So why can't Akhmetov simply hand out the money to the people who want to buy the tickets, if this is such an important match, instead of engaging in silly public relations ploys?
Maybe he can hand out masks along with money for the tickets.