After 72 hydraulic cranes lifted the retractable roof onto Warsaw’s new $400 million national stadium this week, Polish soccer clubs are hoping the flagship arena will come to symbolize a revival in their fortunes.

Poland must build four stadiums for the European championships next year, which it’s co-hosting with neighboring Ukraine. In addition, clubs are spending about 4 billion zloty ($1.3 billion) to add at least 20 more as the Polish economy grows at more than twice the pace of the euro region.

“The perception of the game is changing in Poland,” Pawel Kosmala, chief executive officer of Legia, one of Warsaw’s two top-division teams, said in a Dec. 1 interview. The club moved to a new 31,000-seat stadium in August. “We went to heaven from hell compared to last season,” he said.

After years of cleaning up corruption in the game, tackling hooliganism and convincing officials at European soccer’s governing body UEFA it’s fit to help stage a major tournament, Poland is now eyeing the millions of euros in revenue clubs generate in countries such as England.

Ekstraklasa, the top division, forecasts that the new stadiums and greater public interest in soccer will allow it to increase income from television rights.

Also, average total attendance rose 60 percent to a record 8,271 people at each game during the first half of the current season compared with last year, according to Ekstraklasa’s website. The season resumes on Feb. 26.

TV Income

The league’s 360 million-zloty contract with Vivendi SA’s Canal Plus unit ends after this season. While that amount is dwarfed by the English Premier League, Ekstraklasa spokesman Adrian Skubis predicts the next contract will be worth more, and Markus Tellenbach, chief executive officer of TVN SA, also said his network will have to bid higher.

The English top league’s latest domestic and international broadcast contracts are worth about 3 billion pounds ($4.67 billion) over three years. The league, which was established in 1992, is now the world’s richest.

In addition to the broadcast sales, Legia, whose luxury boxes are already fully booked for when they open in March, forecasts that more than half of its match-day revenue will come from business clients, as does Lechia Gdansk, which will move to one of the Euro 2012 arenas as of next season.

Bigger Crowds

More than 15 Polish cities are putting up their own arenas, including Warsaw, which is spending 374 million zloty on Legia’s new park. The facility, to be completed in March, is across the Vistula River from the 55,000-seat national stadium, which will host the Euro 2012 opener.

Until 2009 the country of 38 million people had only one arena that could hold more than 20,000 spectators. This year that number will rise to seven. Manchester United, which draws the biggest crowds in England, had an average attendance of just under 75,000 people last season, compared with about 39,500 two decades ago, after it used revenue to add more seats.

Legia’s stadium, already 75 percent complete, drew a record crowd of almost 20,000 at each of its seven games in the July- November round, doubling last season’s attendance. The team forecasts that match-day revenue will reach about 40 million zloty in the 2011/2012 season, rising by 10 times from last year, and accounting for more than 40 percent of total revenue.

“Match-day revenue has been the Achilles heel of most Polish clubs,” which relied mostly on sponsors and TV rights, said Wojciech Pertkiewicz, a spokesman for Arka Gdynia, which will move to a 15,000-seat new stadium when the league returns in February. “That will definitely change now.”

Euro Spending

Total investment for the Euro 2012 championships will be 20 billion euros ($26 billion), including spending on stadiums, hotels and transportation infrastructure. Additionally, the government is helping to build almost 3,000 artificial-turf fields in neighborhood parks, for as much as 3 billion zloty.

The cities, the teams and the sponsors have all had to overcome an image of corruption after more than 400 referees, players, officials and coaches were charged in the biggest match-fixing scandal in Polish history.

“Paradoxically, the scandal has helped the game,” Kosmala said. “It cleaned things up. After so many arrests, it’s obvious that nobody would dare to be a part of corruption.”

A new stadium is already paying off for Lech Poznan, which has drawn 40,000 supporters to each of its last three games in the Europa League, the second-tier European competition. The last time a Polish team played in the group stages of the Champions League, the elite competition in Europe, was 1996.

‘Euro Cake’

Lech’s last game, against Italy’s Juventus, was played at minus 15 degrees Celsius (5 degrees Fahrenheit).

“The atmosphere is just superb,” said Robert Smigielski, 36, a Lech supporter for more than 20 years. “Almost everybody sings. Nobody’s sitting down.”

Jagiellonia, the current league leader, will have a 22,500- seat, 156 million-zloty stadium partially ready this year and the club forecasts the annual budget of 20 million zloty will at least double once it’s complete in 2012, said Mariusz Jurczewski, Jagiellonia’s head of marketing. The team now plays in front of 6,000 people in the eastern city of Bialystok.

“We also want to have a bit of this Euro cake,” Jurczewski said.

Source: bloomberg.com

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