MegaFon is a general partner of the Kazan 2013 Universiade as well as a mobile general partner of the Winter Olympics and Paralympics in Sochi in 2014.

In their role as a partner of Sochi 2014 MegaFon will provide all telecommunications services and will use a 4G network for the Winter Games.

The company are heavily involved in the Russian sports market as the country gear up to host a major sports event each year until 2018.

In 2013 Kazan stages the Summer Universiade, and the city hosts the World Swimming Championships in 2015.

Before then Moscow will hold the 2013 World Athletics Championships and Sochi the Winter Olympics and Paralympics in 2014.

The World Ice Hockey Championships are then being held in Moscow and St Petersburg in 2016, with football's Confederations Cup and World Cup taking place in 2017 and 2018, respectively.

To top it off, Sochi is due to host Formula One races from 2014.

It all adds up to quite a decade in Russia, and MegaFon has been one of the main companies taking advantage of the boom in the sports industry.

"During the last eight to 10 years, MegaFon has supported all sport events in Russia – football, hockey," said Tigran Poghosyan, MegaFon's strategic projects director.

"I think MegaFon will participate in all the big sporting events [this decade]."

And what about the World Cup in 2018?

"I think yes," he said.

"We cannot receive now any award for a programme or contract as we are waiting to find out which kind of rights [are available].

Russia hosts the World Ice Hockey Championships in 2016

"For the biggest companies this is a chance to activate a marketing programme.

"We should also understand what kind of rights we can have during the World Cup.

"After that we will decide what we can provide, if it is support as a general partner or as a partner for our national team."

Key to their support for these events is the desire to help give opportunities to the youngsters who will compete for Russia on the world stage in the years to come.

"For us it is really very important to support sport for the kids and go to the Olympics and events," Poghosyan explained.

"For us it very important as our future depends on the youth.

"We want to support our youth teams to be the heroes in the next years and maybe after 2018."

To achieve this, the company has a number of large scale sports-related social projects aimed at giving an opportunity to youngsters to reach their potential.

One such example is an open mini-football championship they hold each year for children from orphanages and boarding schools.

Some of those who have won this tournament have even been to London to visit Arsenal and meet coach Arsene Wenger – the London club's minority shareholder Alisher Usmanov owns the majority of MegaFon shares.

Poghosyan was speaking to insidethegames at Russia.Park in London, where MegaFon was a partner of the Russian Olympic Committee's official residence during the Olympics, which concluded last week. 

They used the opportunity provided by these Games to learn from the experience of British Telecom, the Communications Partner of London 2012, just as Poghosyan says they did with Bell in Vancouver, Canada, during the 2010 Winter Olympics and Paralympics.

"We can work with BT to understand and use this experience in Sochi," he said, adding that they hoped to then be able to pass on their knowledge to Rio de Janeiro, who hold the subsequent Games in 2016.

Contact the writer of this story at [email protected]


Related stories
August 2010: Sochi 2014 test super fast mobile network