Published on: 2026-10-01
Source: Government of the Russian Federation –
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Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko and Minister of Sports, Chairman of the Russian Olympic Committee Mikhail Degtyaryov greeted the organizers and participants of the IV Russian Forum “Gambling: Deductions for Sports.” The speeches took place within the framework of the plenary session “State. Sports. Bookmakers. In Search of a Balance of Interests.”
“Five years ago, historic decisions were made by President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. By the direct order of the head of state, a large-scale reform was initiated, and a public-law company ‘Unified Gambling Regulator’ was established by a separate federal law. Today, the results are obvious: we have legalized the market, and this result is visible in the figures. It is noticeable both in the shrinking share of the illegal segment and in the activity of the regulator,” noted Dmitry Chernyshenko.
Bookmakers’ contributions have become the main non-governmental source of funding for Russian sports. According to the Deputy Prime Minister, there is a growth dynamic both annually and for the first quarter of 2026.
“Effective work is being carried out by the Russian Sports Foundation. Funds are directed towards the training of our athletes and teams, and the hosting of competitions. This is done on a fair competitive basis. Federations approach the organization of events and reporting responsibly, creating a completely transparent, balanced system. This makes a significant contribution to achieving the goal set by the President — increasing the number of people engaged in sports to 70%,” said Dmitry Chernyshenko.
He added that today Russian athletes, thanks to the effective foreign policy of the Ministry of Sports and the Russian Olympic Committee, are returning to the world stage, and it is necessary to take into account the interests of our athletes for whom conditions are being created.
“Russia is now in an unprecedented superposition in terms of transparency and sports governance. The established management vertical allows achieving perfect transparency and end-to-end traceability of all results, which can testify to the effectiveness of the actions of federations and regional businesses. This is undoubtedly a great responsibility that we have all taken on together before the President, and it must be justified and proven by results and figures,” said the Deputy Prime Minister.
The Minister of Sports, Chairman of the Russian Olympic Committee Mikhail Degtyarev spoke at the plenary session of the forum “Gambling: allocations for sports” about the evolution of the system for distributing bookmaker funds for the development of the industry.
“For the first time, the idea to bring the bookmaker business out of the shadows and make it socially responsible by redirecting part of the income to sports development emerged in 2018–2019. In 2021, a Unified Gambling Regulator was created, which effectively transferred these funds to sports federations. In 2025, on the order of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Russian Sports Fund was established. Now, funds from bets on international sports events first go to it and are distributed on a competitive basis. This is how the system is evolving. The RSF increased the transparency of bookmaker money expenditures and expanded the circle of recipients. The law stipulates that, besides federations, funds from the fund may be received by sports societies, sports schools, student sports organizations, the Olympic, Paralympic, and Deaflympic Committees, and other organizations,” the minister said.
He added that another important difference from the previous system is that binding agreements are concluded with recipients of funds from the fund, which is very important for the state. The contract specifies the amount of funds, expected results, form of reporting, and control mechanisms. Essentially, the same fund disbursement system is implemented that operates between the Ministry of Sports and the regions.
“The reporting complicated getting the money, but in the end, everyone coped. In 2026, the RSF Board of Trustees approved the results of 10 competitions totaling 28.7 billion rubles. By the end of the year, the fund plans more than 10 additional competitions. The system of delivering funds to sports organizations will still be refined, but it is already clear that historically it is absolutely justified and will bring enormous benefits to sports and the sports organizations themselves, as the fund has effectively created a platform with a huge amount of data that no one could access before. Some federations did not even know what was happening at the grassroots level. So the new system not only finances but also disciplines sports entities, and provides the state with regulatory tools and a huge data array for analytics,” stated Mikhail Degtyaryov.
The organizer of the forum is the public-law company “Unified Regulator of Gambling Games,” and the operator is the sports platform of the Roscongress Foundation.
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