Since 2014, Shakhtar football club has been playing in other people’s stadiums due to the occupation of Donetsk by Russia. Since then, a whole generation has changed in the Shakhtar team. Many players have left and new ones have arrived. Some of them managed to play in Donetsk as students of Shakhtar’s football academy, while others have almost nothing to do with the city. However, this does not prevent the team from winning Ukrainian titles and playing in the UEFA Champions League. Moreover, the legendary football club is aware of the importance of continuous selection of future players – Shakhtar Football School has been operating at FC Shakhtar all this time. It offers to buy a franchise to open a branch of a football school in your city or village. Even during the war, 5 such schools are operating in Ukraine – 2 of them are in Kyiv.
As part of the special project “Children’s Sport: A Business that is Impossible Without…” Komersant ukrainskyi
talked to Vadym Drobashko, a sports marketer, until recently a development consultant for FC Oleksandriya and owner of the Shakhtar Football School franchise, about how to open your own football school and why this business is more than just a business.
Vadym, your professional and entrepreneurial life has been connected with Shakhtar Football School for many years. What changes has the war brought to the school’s work?
The war had a great, great impact on the business, on the franchise itself. We had to start all over again: recruit children, open new locations. Some locations, on the contrary, ceased to exist. On the eve of the large-scale invasion, we were planning to open schools and had already paid the rent and signed agreements in Kramatorsk and Mariupol. Before that, we had four locations: in Poltava, Kyiv and Bucha. At the beginning of the war, all of them were closed for reasons that were obvious to everyone. Then we wanted to resume operations in Bucha, but…. During the evacuation from Bucha, unfortunately, two children, our pupils, died.
Obviously, we had to start from scratch… Shakhtar Football School is a franchise model. What are the pros and, possibly, cons of this model so that it can become the start of your own sports and training business?
There is such a nuance as renting premises. This time I’m talking about Kyiv. It’s very difficult to find a gym now, because they’ve all been occupied for years. People have been going to the gym for 6-9 years at the same time. You understand that when you open a business, if you want parents to bring their children to football training, you need to have a very convenient time. For example, 17:00, 18:00, 19:00 – these time slots have long been occupied by others.
When it comes to opening such a business in small towns, we need to look at the project’s self-sufficiency. After all, if you invest money, you have to understand how much you will get back. If we’re talking about a small town and investing more than $20-30 thousand in a business, we need to understand that it will take a very long time to get the money back. In big cities, it happens much faster because there are a lot of children. That is, you need to understand how many children in your town are interested in football, how many schools there are, and whether the Shakhtar brand is popular there. That’s if we talk about the disadvantages of starting a business of this type.
In your experience, can a well-known franchise name be considered a guarantee of the school’s popularity among children and parents? And why?
A brand such as Shakhtar really deserves respect and recognition all over the world. We have been working on this business franchise for 4 years now and we realised that, for example, we would definitely become popular in Kyiv. Children will come to us, because there are many migrants from Donbass, from eastern Ukraine. They love this club. At first, there were indeed many children from Donetsk, Kramatorsk, Kharkiv, and Mariupol. Relatively speaking, it was about 60%.
Today, as it turned out, sport is actually inaccessible to many young Ukrainians. While the situation in cities with a population of over a million is more or less normal, when it comes to small towns and villages, the situation is critical. Could a franchise model for developing clubs and hobby groups be useful here? What does a future entrepreneur need to know and be prepared for such a business?
In fact, there is a very good trend in Ukraine right now: professional clubs such as Shakhtar, Kryvbas and Dynamo are partnering with children’s and youth schools from different cities and towns, thus helping to develop football professionally. They take patronage over them, provide them with balls and various things necessary for young footballers, so the problem has moved forward. Development has begun. A lot of children’s and youth sports schools receive help in this way. This is a good prospect for the development of sport in small towns.
You play football yourself. And you also combine the development of your own business with the position of Development and Communications Director at FC Oleksandriya. Do these competences help in business when you are responsible for the marketing component, the level of teams, the organisation of tournaments, etc In what way?
Yes, I am actively involved in football. I used to be the Director of Development and Communications at FC Oleksandriya, but since April this year I have not held this position. I decided to do my own thing, my business and be more near my family in Kyiv. When my family was away, it was morally uncomfortable.
As for my experience, of course, football knowledge, acquaintances, practice – all this helps a lot in this business. A person who hasn’t played football, who doesn’t know anything about football, won’t be able to effectively run a business related to a football school for children. You need to understand children, how to train coaches who work with children, and understand the approach of the administrator so that he or she is also a football person and communicates well with our clients – parents who bring their children to the groups.
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“That’s why I think that people in this type of business or those who want to do it should have a little bit of football in them. Of course, you can hire someone who knows about football and pay them extra money. I believe that football people are still needed in this business. Especially when we are talking about children aged 2 to 8. Not only do you need to know about football, but you need to know about raising little kids, as they say, to do football animation.
As we know, you are trying to develop your sports business in parallel/adjacent areas. We are talking about special mats for training children. Can this be considered an example of scaling up a sports business? That is, an active entrepreneur has many ways of further development if he or she wishes?
As for scaling the business, yes, I have not only mats. I also have steamers for boots. This is a new thing that is popular in the EU. In Ukraine, I have already sold to four professional clubs – Polissia, Metalist and a few others.
Let me tell you a little more about the mats – this is the latest technology for the development of a young footballer. It was adopted from experts in Korea, then Japan became interested and, of course, China started to use it. In fact, the technology helps a lot with coordination. You can develop some coordination exercises in a child. In 20-30 minutes, a child gets a full workout. We have released video tutorials for 40 workouts, so this is a very useful thing not only for children but also for adults. I believe that this is the future – when a child can play football even at home in front of the TV. I sell this product at my school. I have received the first orders from Moldova and Poland.
That’s why we are scaling up and not standing still. I believe that you don’t need to do one thing – you need to develop, be interested in the world, and apply it all in our country.