Euro 2012 Draws First Soccer Club to Warsaw Bourse

By Maciej Martewicz

Dec. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Ruch Chorzow SA, a Polish soccer club with a budget about 1 percent of Arsenal’s and a stadium where 90 percent of the seats aren’t covered by a roof, rose as much as 46 percent on its first day of trading in Warsaw.

Ruch, the first soccer club from central and eastern Europe to be traded on a stock exchange, gained 0.79 zloty to 2.49 and closed at 1.84 zloty, advancing 8.2 percent on NewConnect, Warsaw’s market for smaller companies. It was the 55th stock this year to join the trading platform.

“In couple of years’ perspective my dream is to move to the main market,” Chief Executive Officer Katarzyna Sobstyl said in a statement distributed before a news conference in Warsaw today. “It’ll be like a promotion to the first division.”

The 14-time champion of Poland, based in the southern city of Chorzow, sold new shares in a private placement in September, raising 1.81 million zloty ($597,500) for an 11 percent stake. It will spend most of the cash on new players.

Ruch, which isn’t related to kiosk operator Ruch SA, forecasts net income will grow to 1.74 million zloty in 2012, from 233,681 zloty now. It’s banking on the European soccer championships, which Poland hosts with neighboring Ukraine that year, to boost interest in the game.

“Neither the financial crisis, nor the controversy swirling around Polish soccer, could stop us,” Sobstyl said.

‘Right Direction’

Poland last month almost forfeited its World Cup qualifying matches after an arbitration court suspended the management of its football association for not doing enough to fight match- fixing scandals in which more than 100 people have been charged.

“Any move like Ruch’s is a step in the right direction” for Polish soccer, as it will raise transparency and improve the league’s image, Jacek Bochenek, head of Deloitte & Touche LLP’s operations related to the championship, said by phone yesterday.

Polish soccer clubs had sales of 63 million euros ($79.6 million) last season, up 47 percent from a year earlier, according to figures from Deloitte cited in Ruch’s prospectus. Bochenek says they could top 200 million euros. That compares with 2.3 billion euros for England’s Premier League and accounts for 0.5 percent of the European total.

Ruch, now seventh in Poland’s 16-team first division, aims to win the championship again as early as in 2011, by which time it could more than double its revenue from 2007, to 16.5 million zloty. Sales may reach 10.1 million zloty in 2008, about 1 percent of the 223 million pounds ($328.5 million) Arsenal Holdings Plc, a north London-based soccer club, reported for the 12 months ended May 31, according to the prospectus.

Average turnout this season at Ruch’s 10,000-seat stadium is 8,407, compared with a Polish league average of 6,741 and 75,691 at English Premiership champion Manchester United.

Chorzow, like Spain’s FC Barcelona, displays a charitable foundation’s logo on its strip, forgoing revenue from a corporate sponsor. “We do it because we want to make the game more friendly to potential new supporters, such as families,” Marzena Mrozik, Ruch’s marketing director, said by telephone yesterday.

To contact the reporter on this story: Maciej Martewicz in Warsaw at mmartewicz@bloomberg.net