Sportmaster, the biggest sporting goods retailer in Russia, says it has built 825 sporting grounds in 76 Russian cities to make sports more accessible and popular for local citizens. The eventual target is to ramp up this figure to 1,000 sporting grounds in 100 cities.
Sportmaster said that these sporting grounds are being set up near residential buildings, schools, universities and social insitutions. This is a part of a charitable endeavor, called Pokolenie or Generation, that the company launched in 2013.
A manager of the company, Sergey Agibalov, said that this project is a top priority for Sportmaster, as sports participation is not particularly developed in Russia. Furthermore, the share of Russians who adhere to healthy lifestyle principles shrank by 25 percent during the past year, according to a Russian consulting agency, FinExpertise. To be included in this category, citizens have to have at least 150 minutes of workout per week, or 75 minutes of intense workout per week.
Only 12 percent of Russians matched such healthy lifestyle criteria in 2020, down from 15 percent in the previous year, FinExpertise said. Big cities have the highest share of the population involved in various sports. In some provinces, the percentage of people who exercised dropped significantly last year.
