Moscow Times
Gazprom Neft, the oil-producing arm of Russian state gas company Gazprom, has finalized sponsorship deals with the SKA and Avangard hockey clubs worth a total of about 2 billion rubles ($57 million), Vedomosti reported Wednesday.
The St. Petersburg-based SKA hockey club, which reached the semifinals of the Kontinental Hockey League’s western conference in March, will receive 1.18 billion rubles ($33 million) to advertise the company’s brand until the end of 2014.
Gazprom Neft’s board of directors has also agreed to pay out 798 million rubles ($23 million) to Avangard, a club from the Siberian city of Omsk that failed to qualify for the playoffs after finishing 10th in the eastern conference. The sponsorship deal between the two sides runs from August to April 2015.
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