#ВСИЧКИЗАЛЕВСКИ
Menu
#ВСИЧКИЗАЛЕВСКИ
Dear Levski Sofia friends,
Today we extend our hand to you and ask for your help in the most troublesome time for our beloved football club. As some of you may have already heard, the very existence of Levski is at stake, as 10 years of political games and shaded economical demeaner have led the team to the brink of bankruptcy. Since the beginning of 2020 supporters have managed to keep Levski alive through numerous donations and monumental efforts. Unfortunately, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic slowed the campaign down and we now find ourselves in an extremely harsh situation. We have only a couple of weeks to prevent the final collapse from taking place. This is why we kindly ask for your share in order to help Levski Sofia survive, thus letting its fans continue being a bright example of unreserved support across Europe.
If you are willing to help us, below we have explained how you could chip in to the cause, enabling us to continue writing our legendary story.
Further below on this page you can also read why and how we ended up here, as well as a very brief history of Levski.
DONATE VIA PAYPAL
The National Revenues Agency’s debt means that the football club cannot have its own PayPal account. Therefore, the donations are accepted via the Supporters’ Trust PayPal account. The Trust itself transfers the funds to the club on a weekly basis. Detailed reports could be found in the report section of the website.
More about the trust: The trust called ‘Blue Bulgaria’ (Sinya Bulgaria in local language) was founded formally in 2014. It is a minority shareholder, currently owning 10% of the club, and it has worked side by side with the club for the development of all the major fundraising initiatives throughout the past 4 months.
DONATE VIA HELPKARMA
The platform allows one-time as well as monthly donations and supports any type of credit or debit cards (VISA, Maestro or MasterCard) from all over the world.
All donations are received by the football club without any intermediation or third parties and the funds are being transferred to the club’s bank account each 48 hours.
The campaign could be found here:
Purchase tickets for Levski Sofia’s 106th anniversary celebratory concert
To mark Levski’s 106th anniversary, the club is holding a concert on 24 May, which will involve some of the best-loved Bulgarian singers and artists. The event will take place at Levski’s Georgi Asparuhov Stadium. No spectators will be present, but the club has launched an unlimited number of virtual tickets, which fans can buy to support the cause.
Each ticket costs 10 BGN, i.e. less than £5. Only tickets that give virtual access to the corporate boxes are priced at 106 BGN or approximately £50.
Please buy yours here:
Our favorite football club – Levski Sofia – needs its fans more than ever. Over the last few years, the club has accumulated debts of more than 16 million BGN (approximately £8m). Critically, Levski owes nearly 5m BGN to Bulgaria’s National Revenues Agency (the equivalent of HMRC in the UK). Following an agreement struck with the Agency, the club is currently paying installments of 143,000 BGN (approx. £65,000) on a monthly basis. Should Levski fail to pay out even one installment on time, the Agency will automatically require the entire amount of money to be paid at once. This, unfortunately, will doom the club to extinction, given its financial condition.
But fans are resolved to not let this happen!
Having always been Levski’s lifeblood and its most valuable capital, the club’s supporters have launched a number of initiatives to enable it to continue paying each installment. We have already raised nearly 600,000 BGN, successfully covering four installments (from February until May), and we are making good progress for the June installment. In addition, we funded the club with yet another 1,4 million BGN by breaking Levski’s all-time season ticket record and even selling out a game, which was to be held behind closed doors and was eventually postponed.
Together with raising funds for these installments, we have also undertaken a larger-than-life task to generate donations of at least 1.5m BGN by May 30th, in order to pay first-team players and coaching staff their salaries. Sadly, the club has been unable to pay its players for the last 2 months and should this period extends to 3 consecutive months, the footballers will be free to leave. In this case the club will have to pay them all the money they would have otherwise earned for the remainder of their contracts.
It is crucial for Levski to find the resources to pay its players, so that we can survive until the transfer window opens when the club will be looking to sell its highest-paid players.
We are now reaching out to football fans in the UK and across the globe who share our passion for the beautiful game. We want to share our story with those of you who regard pride and dignity as the foremost values that inform the relationship between a fan and their team. We hope to find solidarity among the wider football community, because we know that every fan cherishes tradition and hurts when financial woes befall any legendary club, wherever in the world it might be based.
We would be eternally grateful to each and every one of you, if you supported our cause to save Levski Sofia by a financial contribution of any size. The ways to do that are shown in the section above.
Levski Sofia was founded on 24 May 1914 by a group of students at Sofia’s Second Male High School. Their fervent patriotism led them to name the club after Bulgaria’s greatest revolutionary – Vasil Levski – who fought to liberate the country from Ottoman rule in the 19th century and died for the cause.
Throughout its 106-year history, Levski has built the largest fanbase of any Bulgarian football club. During the communist regime in the country, which lasted between 1944 and 1989, the club gained the nickname The People’s Team as it established itself as the main rival of CSKA Sofia – a club formed by the Communist party and widely associated with the regime. Levski, on the other hand, had the love of the common people and symbolised the idea of freedom in the totalitarian regime.
In the first 20 years after the fall of communism, Levski was Bulgaria’s most successful team, winning a total of 9 league titles and 9 domestic cups. Moreover, in 2006 it became the first side from Bulgaria to qualify for the Champions League group stage.
Levski has won 26 league titles, 26 domestic cups, reached UEFA Cup 1/4 finals twice,
Alas, Levski hasn’t won a trophy since 2009. Poor club management from a succession of owners whose good intentions have continuously been questioned by fans due to their alleged connections with members of the political elite, has caused the financial plight the club finds itself in at the moment. The result of this careless management is that Levski could be mere days away from bankruptcy.
In late January, Levski’s owner – a well-known gambling boss in Bulgaria – had his business practically nationalised by the state. He is currently being sued for tax evasion and his business’ accounts have been blocked for several months. All this meant that Levski could no longer rely on any financial backing. It was time for the fans to become the club’s biggest sponsor.