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Moscow stadium to give away chairs for free

Chairs from the Big Sport Arena will be handed over to people free of charge when the Luzhninki stadium closes for reconstruction for 2018 World Cup

© ITAR-TASS/Alexey Filippov

MOSCOW, December 11. /ITAR-TASS/. Any person will be able to take away chairs from the Big Sport Arena in Luzhniki free of charge as a memorable gift when the Luzhniki stadium closes for reconstruction for the 2018 World Football Cup, according to Alexander Shprygin, the president of the Russian Fan Association.

“The initiative has come from the Russian Fan Association. We already have the necessary experience. As you may know, we carried out the same action when the Dynamo stadium in Petrovsky Park closed for reconstruction five years ago. I don’t think that we are going to have any organizational problems. We have already made all necessary arrangements. Detailed information will be published in the next two days,” Shprygin told Itar-Tass on Wednesday.

Moscow’s Luzhniki stadium will undergo fundamental reconstruction for the 2018 World Football Cup. The renovated Big Sport Arena will be the venue for the World Cup’s opening match, one of the semi-finals and the final match. Active renovation works are unlikely to start earlier than 2014. They will have to be completed by May 2017, according to the FIFA requirements.

After the renovation, the Big Sport Arena will be able to accommodate 81,000 people. Three hundred seats will be created for disabled people who will be able to get to the stands by using special wheelchair ramps. A special circle of VIP-seats and more than 6,000 seats for journalists will be built in the arena. All of them will become fan stands after the 2018 World Cup. The total area of the Big Sport Arena, including the space under the stands, will be 166,000 square metres.

The Big Sport Arena in Luzhniki hosted an UEFA final match in 1999 and a Champion’s League match in 2008. The 2013 World Athletics Championships was the last major sport event held at the Big Sport Arena.

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