Why does Schnur gather more people in the stadium than our soccer players?

Sports venues built for major competitions like the World Cup or the Olympics are often left in disrepair when the sporting festivities are over. For example, the Mane Garrincha Stadium in Brasilia and other arenas in Brazil, South Africa, Greece and China remain idle. Naturally, the maintenance of such facilities costs a tidy sum.

Russia, in order to host the 2018 FIFA World Cup, built and reconstructed 12 stadiums with a capacity of 33,000 to 81,000 spectators. Most of them, despite the growing attendance of Russian soccer, are idle and a burden on the country’s budget. The stadiums in Volgograd, Yekaterinburg, Kaliningrad, Nizhny Novgorod, Rostov-on-Don, Samara and Saransk will cost 16 billion rubles to maintain until 2023. By that time, according to the government’s plans, the stadiums should become multifunctional centers and learn to earn money from concerts, renting out vacant space for fitness centers, trade and catering.

The Leningrad group is one of the few Russian bands capable of packing stadiums. In 2019, Sergei Shnurov and his team announced a farewell stadium tour and set out to save the legacy of the Mundial from neglect. From June 4 to October 12, the musicians will play concerts at 9 stadiums from Kaliningrad to St. Petersburg. In total, “Leningrad” plans to gather 450 thousand spectators – that’s the average number of spectators who come to the matches of the Russian Premier League team during the whole season. Taking into account that 45.5 thousand spectators came to the concert in Moscow, and more than 21 thousand people in Kaliningrad, they are well within their reach.