A brothel and a funeral home have become the newest benefactors of two cash-strapped Greek soccer clubs struggling to survive the country’s economic crisis.
As Greece endures its worst slump since World War Two, thousands of businesses have closed, one in four is jobless and government funding for anything from health to sports is hard to come by.
“We had a very serious financial problem so I thought, why not?” Batziolas, who has managed the club since 2010, told Reuters from the team’s home city of Larissa in central Greece.
Their new sponsor Soula Alevridou, a stocky 67-year-old woman who owns three luxury brothels, agreed to cover all costs and the players now flaunt pink shorts and T-shirts emblazoned with her brothels’ logos, including “Villa Erotica”.
“The players couldn’t believe it at first but now they’re happy about it,” Batziolas said, estimating the club needs about 10,000 euros a year to survive.
“The first thing they said to me – half-joking, half-serious – was ‘What kind of bonuses will we get?'” he added, laughing.
Voukefalas, named after the horse of Alexander the Great, is not the only ailing club to sign a deal with unconventional sponsors.
On Saturday Voukefalas, which is fighting a ban by local league organizers to wear the jerseys at matches, played against Hercules, a team sponsored by the All Day Bar, an escorts bar.
Further north in the city of Trikala, the Palaiopyrgos club – many of whose players still attend school – have signed a deal with a funeral home.
“For us it was a matter of survival,” manager Lefteris Vassiliou told Greek radio, saying the team had not been able to secure any sponsorship since Europe’s debt crisis erupted here three years ago.
Despite the macabre attire – black jerseys with the undertaker’s logo and a large white cross down the middle – Vassiliou said the players had taken it well, and it had even given them an advantage over their opponents.
Recounting a recent match, he said: “The goalkeeper kept crossing himself, our competitors lost every play. It seems they were too scared to come near us.”
The world’s oldest profession is giving a whole new meaning to love of the game. Players on a cash-strapped Greek soccer team now wear pink practice jerseys with the logos “Villa Erotica” and “Soula’s House of History,” two bordellos it recruited as sponsors after drastic government spending cuts left the country’s sports clubs facing ruin.
Other teams have also turned to unconventional financing. One has a deal with a local funeral home and others have wooed kebab shops, a jam factory and producers of Greece’s trademark feta cheese. But the amateur Voukefalas club – whose players include pizza delivery guys, students, waiters and a bartender – has raised eyebrows with its flamboyant sponsorship choice.
“Unfortunately, amateur football has been abandoned by almost everyone,” said Yiannis Batziolas, the club’s youthful chairman, who runs a travel agency and is the team’s backup goalkeeper.
“It’s a question of survival.” Prostitution is legal in Greece, where brothels operate under strict guidelines. Though garish neon signs advertising their services are tolerated, the soccer sponsorship has ruffled some feathers in the sports-mad city of Larissa.
League organizers have banned the pink jerseys during games, saying the deal violates “the sporting ideal” and is inappropriate for underage fans. Brothel owner Soula Alevridou, the team’s new benefactor, has already paid more than 1,000 euros ($1,312) for players to wear her jerseys.
The team is appealing the game ban, but that doesn’t worry the 67-year-old Alevridou, who says shes only in it because she loves soccer. “It’s not the kind of business that needs promotion,” she said, dressed all in white and flanked by two young women in dark leggings at a recent game.
“It’s a word-of-mouth kind of thing.” Alevridou watched in disappointment as her team lost its fourth straight game, 1-0, despite her promise to players of “a special time” at her businesses if they won.
