Information agency Credinform represents a ranking of the Russian and foreign football clubs by total volume of assets. Using the Information and Analytical System Globas, the experts of the Agency selected Top-5 of the Russian and Top-5 of foreign teams with the largest amount of assets. For the overall valuation of the club’s assets, market value of its players was taken into account.

Table 1. Assets of Top-5 football clubs of Russia

Rank	Name	Balance sheet assets, billion RUB	Market value of players, billion RUB	Overall evaluation of assets, billion RUB	The most valuable player, billion RUB
1	FC Zenit Saint Petersburg	16,45	12,09	28,54	Wilmar Barrios (1,09 billion RUB)
2	PFC CSKA Moscow	17,27	9,84	27,11	Mario Fernandes (1,89 billion RUB)
3	FC Krasnodar Krasnodar	6,31	7,19	13,49	Viktor Claesson (1,02 billion RUB)
4	FC Spartak M Moscow	5,59	7,67	13,27	Roman Zobnin (0,94 billion RUB)
5	FC Dinamo M Moscow	5,93	2,40	8,33	Konstantin Raush (0,22 billion RUB)

Source: Information and Analytical System Globas by Credinform; data from Transfermarkt. Players’ value transferred to roubles at the rate of euro on April 23, 2019.

FC Zenit, the team from Saint Petersburg, has the most valuable composition in the Russian Premier League (RPL)¹. According to Transfermarkt, the German portal dedicated to football transfers, the market value of the players of the club is estimated at more than 12 billion RUB. Coupled with a significant level of balance sheet assets (16,45 billion RUB), this makes the team a leader in the ranking. The Colombian footballer Wilmar Barrios, who signed a contract with the club in February 2019, was recognized the most valuable player of the club, and cost 1,09 billion RUB in the transfer market.

The second is PFC CSKA from Moscow - one of the oldest and most titled clubs in the post-Soviet history of Russian football. The value of the balance sheet assets of the club is higher than that of the other Russian clubs (17,27 billion RUB), and the Brazilian player Mario Fernandes is recognized as the most valuable player not only of the club, but also of the entire RPL. In 2016, the footballer received Russian citizenship, which allowed him to participate in the Russian team at the triumphant World Championships. Thanks to the successful game for the national team, the transfer value of Mario Fernandez today is 1,89 billion RUB.

The total balance sheet assets of other clubs included in the ranking - FC Krasnodar, FC Spartak M and FC Dynamo M - are almost equal to the level of assets of PFC CSKA.

It is noteworthy that only one of the Top-5 Russian clubs is in private ownership. FC Krasnodar belongs to the Russian billionaire Sergei Galitsky, the former founder and co-owner of the largest retail network of JSC Magnit.

The ultimate owners of Zenit and Dynamo are government agencies. The team from Saint Petersburg is controlled by the Russian government through JSC Gazprom , and the Moscow club is controlled by the security forces of Russia.

The key owner of Spartak is the investment company JSC Capital .

Through the British company Bluecastle Enterprises LTD, PFC CSKA owners originated on offshore Marshall Islands.

Three representatives of England and two representatives of Spain are included in the ranking of the world football top clubs by assets. It should come as no surprise, because England is the birthplace of football, and football in Spain is the second religion.

Table 2. Assets of Top-5 football clubs of the world

Rank	Name	Balance sheet assets, billion RUB	Market value of players, billion RUB	Overall evaluation of assets, billion RUB	The most valuable player, billion RUB
1	Manchester City England, Manchester	86,42	82,84	169,26	Kevin De Bruyne (10,9 billion RUB)
2	Manchester United England, Manchester	106,11	57,85	163,96	Paul Pogba (6,54 billion RUB)
3	Barcelona Spain, Barcelona	74,36	85,75	160,11	Lionel Messi (11,63 billion RUB)
4	Real Madrid Spain, Madrid	79,69	70,15	149,84	Toni Kroos (5,81 billion RUB)
5	Arsenal England, London	84,59	45,46	130,05	Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang(5,45 billion RUB)

Source: Orbis database by Bureau van Dijk; data from Transfermarkt. Players’ value transferred to roubles at the rate of euro on April 23, 2019.

The most valuable world top club is the English professional football team Manchester City. The total assets of the club, taking into account the value of its players, amounted to 169,26 billion RUB, which is almost six times higher than that of the Russian leader, FC Zenit.

Manchester United - one of the most successful English clubs by the number of titles won in the entire history - is the second in the ranking only due to the lower cost of its players. The total assets valuation of the team is close to 164 billion RUB.

The cost of the most valuable player of the represented foreign top clubs is 11,63 billion RUB. Due to the sporting achievements, the world star and FC Barcelona striker Argentine Lionel Messi is rightfully included in the list of the most valuable players in the world.

It is noteworthy that outstanding financial performance is not a guarantee of a successful team performance. Being the first in the ranking, Manchester City never in its history qualified for the Champions League²final. Clear leaders, Barcelona and Real Madrid, are at the 3rd and 4th places. Two of these Spanish grandees have 6 victories in the last 6 years of the “Old World Tournament”.

Real Madrid from Spain is the record holder in the number of Champions League titles won - 13, and has a unique achievement for modern football - 3 victories in a row in the most prestigious football tournament in Europe. However, transfer of the starring Portuguese Cristiano Ronaldo to Italian Juventus for 8,72 billion RUB, along with the indistinct performance of the team in all tournaments of the season 2018/2019, has led to a decrease in the market value of the players, dropping the Spaniards to the 4th place in the world Top Clubs.

The results of the ranking show that football is still a team sport, in which mutual understanding and teamwork are valued. Money is not the only thing to become a winner - it is important to behave as a single, cohesive mechanism, work hard, train and be more than just a team.

¹ Russian Premier League, RPL is the top division professional association football league in Russia.
² Champions League is the most prestigious European tournament among European club football teams. Also known as the “Old World Tournament”.

Financial technologies, or abbreviated FinTech, are rapidly changing our live and entering into competition with traditional institutions represented by banks and intermediaries in the financial services market. It becomes possible to make a non-cash payment from a buyer to a seller, get instantly a loan at a favorable rate, invest capital successfully - and all this, bypassing an intermediary bank.

The specifics of the digitalization process in Russia is in that namely traditional banks, and not venture funds and investment companies are at the head of infrastructure projects, finance FinTech-startups, create platforms for testing of innovative solutions. Among the most active are members of the FinTech Association - Sberbank, VTB, Alfa-bank. Prospects of new technologies encourage the banking sector to modernize its business processes, improve internal information systems, enhance the quality of data analysis. As a result, technologies are developing primarily for the b2b sphere.

The specifics of the digitalization process in Russia is in that namely traditional banks, and not venture funds and investment companies are at the head of infrastructure projects, finance FinTech-startups, create platforms for testing of innovative solutions. Among the most active are members of the FinTech Association - Sberbank, VTB, Alfa-bank. Prospects of new technologies encourage the banking sector to modernize its business processes, improve internal information systems, enhance the quality of data analysis. As a result, technologies are developing primarily for the b2b sphere.

Among the popular trends in the development of new technologies the register of distributed data and the application programming interface should be highlighted. Thanks to the first technology, well-known cryptocurrencies, monetary surrogates, appeared. The second technology is a software tool that allows different systems and applications to communicate with each other and exchange data. The API technology is successfully used by users of the Information and Analysis system Globas for data integrating into corporate systems.

The downside of the use of new technologies in the absence of legal regulation is the increased risks of financial losses for services’ consumers, violation of their rights, involvement in operations on legalization of illegally received funds, participation in financial pyramids. Illegal actions become possible due to the anonymity of participants of transactions. The absence of regulatory laws gives rise to incomparably different degree of responsibility and conditions of Fintech and traditional commerce market participants.

Today two big tasks are facing Russia and the regulator: to create an infrastructure for universal access to financial technologies and ensure legal regulation. Only equal rights of conditions of developments’ financing, non-discriminatory access of market participants to technologies, as well as the protection of consumer rights and their personal data will create conditions for FinTech development, application of innovations not only in the financial sphere, but also for transformation of all sectors of the economy, and also for creation of a comfortable new reality for individuals, ultimate consumers of products and services.

In Russia, FinTech is represented in the following areas:

• investment - services that help investors manage their assets;
• loyalty - special tools for managing of customer loyalty;
• PFM (Personal Finance Management) – systems or services for effective management of personal finance;
• online accounting – service for automatization of the process of reporting activities;
• crowdfunding and crowdinvesting - alternative platforms for fundraising and tools for investment projects;
• marketplaces - aggregators of information on products and services of companies for search of a fair offer;
• neobanks - banks that do not have physical branches, operating online and on technology platforms;
• infrastructure solutions - specialized services designed to automate the following processes: work with data, credit rating, information security.

So far, there is no legal and regulatory framework in the sphere of FinTech, but as part of the implementation of the program «Digital economy of the Russian Federation» it is planned to develop and adopt regulatory legal acts by 2020 that will ensure the successful development of the innovation sector.

Until the end of 2019, several laws are to be adopted and brought into force that regulate the procedure for conducting of transactions in electronic form, laws on digital financial assets, crowdfunding (attracting of investment through electronic platforms), digital rights.

Read about the law, which comes into force on October 1, 2019 and introduces the concept of «digital right», in our next publications.