Choron Diamond institutes a special eponymous prize for the Russian Football Premier League winner
MOSCOW, Russia — Choron Diamond, the Russia-based jewelry company that is a part of international holding Choron, which specializes in production and sale of polished diamond and jewelries around the globe, has instituted an eponymous prize, the Choron Diamond Cup, which will be awarded annually to a Russian Premier League football club, whose senior and junior teams perform best in their respective national championships in a soccer season.
The first award ceremony will take place at the end of the 2010 season. The formula for determining the recipient of the annual trophy is relatively simple, as the Cup will be handed to the club, whose tally of the main and youth teams’ final positions on the league tables at the ends of their respective championships will yield the smallest sum, Sergei Pryadkin — the vice president of the Russian Football Union and president of the Russian Football Premier League (RFPL), which runs the professional football club leagues in Russia — and, Rajesh Gandhi, the CEO of Choron Diamond, said at a press conference following the signing of the landmark agreement in the ballroom of Moscow’s Ritz Carlton Hotel on September 3.
The Choron Diamond Cup trophy comes into two forms. The bigger one, made in a form of a life-size football from 2.5kg of gold, 33,140 white and 10,728 black diamonds, will be awarded to the winner, while the smaller cup, made from 460g of gold, 3,790 white and 2,340 black diamonds, will be awarded to runner-up club, based on the sum of the teams’ aggregate positions. According to the terms of the partnership agreement, Choron Diamond, which has been accorded the status of an official sponsor of the Russian Football League Championship, will produce a new cup each year, as awarded trophies are to remain in winners’ custody for keep, the signatories to the sponsorship agreement said.
Combining gems’ rarity with football mass audience
Commenting on the deal, Gandhi said it was a great honor for him and his company to institute the new prize together with the RFPL. “We are very glad that we succeeded in bringing the idea of this Cup to life. It took a whole year to manufacture this truly unique Cup, using the latest and most advanced technologies in the jewelry industry, including microscopic installations of the gems into these trophies,” he added. “This was because we wanted to create a really unique prize that has no analogs in the world and we hope that this trophy will contribute to further popularization of football in Russia as well as Russian football abroad.”
From his side, Pryadkin, speaking on behalf of the RFPL and the entire Russian football management, expressed appreciation to Choron Diamond and its CEO for undertaking such a serious commitment in ‘such difficult crisis times’ to promote Russian football. “This is a strategic partnership agreement as we plan to broaden the current level of cooperation between the RFPL and Choron Diamond with time to include other aspects of Russian football.”
Both parties have expressed confidence that institution of the new trophy will help fast-track further development of football, especially the youth soccer, in Russia. “The inclusion of the premier clubs’ youth teams into the scheme for awarding the Cup is intended to give an additional impetus to young footballers and attract more attention to the games of the youth football championship in the country,” Pryadkin said.
Echoing a similar view, Gandhi noted that the ‘successes of young footballers are often unnoticed, which is unfair to such players,’ a negative trend that the newly instituted Cup is intended to rectify in the country. “By instituting this trophy, Choron Diamond will be making huge contribution to the overall success of the clubs,” he added.
Choron Diamond Cup – a priceless trophy with a ‘cultural value’
Prompted to put a price tag on the cup, Gandhi noted that it would be difficult to exactly state the value of the Cup because of its ‘uniqueness,’ as it currently has no analogs in Russia, and, indeed, across the globe. Airing a similar view, Igor Budnikov, the director of the RFPL’s Press Service Department, noted that trying to arbitrarily attach a ‘monetary value’ to such unique product would be inappropriate, as not everything can be measured in U.S. dollars or euros, especially a trophy of such caliber and uniqueness that qualifies it as a priceless work of art with a ‘cultural value.’
However, to give the audience at the press conference that was really eager to know the ‘real financial worth’ of the precious prize, Pryadkin noted that the RFPL, during the partnership negotiations with Choron Diamond, had valued the Cup at not less than $1mln. “This is not the actual cost or real value of the Cup, but it does serve as a guide to the overall picture of this trophy’s real worth.”
Asked to highlight the motivation for sponsoring football, which is a mass sport, and not the more elitist forms of sport such as lawn tennis, golf, yachting, polo etc., that are traditionally associated with luxury good brands such as jewelries, the signatories to the Choron Diamond Cup sponsorship agreement named love for soccer, yearning for its further popularization in Russia among spectators and youth as well as a well-thought-out marketing strategy on the side of Choron Diamond as some of the key reasons that eventually clinched the lucrative deal for the nation’s most popular sporting activity. “Though I’m not a big soccer fan, my son, who has recently joined the company from the United Kingdom, is, and it was, indeed, his decision for us to undertake this sponsorship agreement to help popularize this sport further in Russia,” Gandhi said.
On his side, Pryadkin, defending the choice of soccer for the lucrative sponsorship, noted that football, without any intended disrespect for all other forms of internationally acclaimed sports, is, unquestionably, the No. 1 sport in the world in terms of popularity and social relevance, including Russia. “This is evident in the number of spectators that averages about 13,000 per Russian premier football league match nationwide,” he added. “And, given this unprecedented level of popularity of football across Russia, and the fact that under this current partnership agreement that the RFPL will be providing some product placement and other promotion services for Choron Diamond in all its activities in the country, one can conclude that there is a commercial component, namely, huge advertisement opportunities, for the jewelry company, in this cooperation agreement.” The duration of the agreement was not disclosed at the press conference.
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