Russian World Cup-2018 and Corporate Power.

The paper investigates the corporate interests and strategies in promoting and organizing FIFA World Cup-2018 in Russia. Sport is viewed from the perspective of business that is, built on the logic of capitalism, and its impact on everyday social life and including sport and leisure consumption. The paper focuses on corporate sponsorship, advertizing campaigns and political lobbying, to highlight the logic of capitalist monopolies within the global sport industry, specifically sport mega-events. Increasingly leisure time, both globally and in Russia, influenced by the media, corporations and the governments who seek revenues from the consumption of sport both in terms of participation and spectatotorship. The main corporate sponsors of Russian sport are oil and gas companies (Gasprom, Lukoil, etc), metal companies (Severstal, Norilsky Nikel, etc), and financial and banking structures (Sberbank, VTB24, etc). Many of these corporations are deeply embedded in Russian political power, lobbying their business interests resulting in a tendency to merge state and corporate business interests. The sport industry, including football, is a rapidly growing sector of Russian business especially as sport becomes more global. This paper concerns the global developments and changes in geopolitics, focusing on the rising confrontation of the West with Russia. Following the recent global financial crisis there has been a tendency to locate international sport mega-events, particularly football tournaments, in countries with developing economies that often lack the power of financial capital, like BRICS states (China 2008 Olympics, Brazil 2016 Olympics, Russian 2014 Winter Olympics, South African 2010 FIFA World Cup, Brazil 2014 FIFA World Cup, India 2017 U-17 FIFA World Cup, Russia 2018 FIFA World Cup, etc). Despite the social inequalities within hosting states and even admitting the social value of developing sport facilities for mega-events, corporations use their power to subjugate sport to business interests.