Domestic Software Is Set to Boost Russian Sport
Russia is moving to run its sports system on homegrown software. A new joint venture is intended to digitize public administration across the country’s physical culture and sports sector.
Import Substitution Meets Sports Governance
Rostelecom and Moi Sport have established a joint venture, Nash Sport, aimed at digitizing state governance in physical culture and sports in Russia. The newly created company’s main line of business is software development. Nash Sport was registered in January with a charter capital of 4.08 million rubles (approximately $49,000). Rostelecom holds a 51 percent stake through its subsidiary Telecom-1, while Moi Sport owns the remaining 49 percent.
The new structure is designed to replace fragmented regional systems and Excel-based reporting with a unified digital backbone for the sports sector. This shift points to centralized tools for data management and analytics, as well as the development of a domestic market for IT services supporting sports administration. According to the project’s architects, the system is expected to operate across a connected “sports – education – healthcare” framework.
Less Bureaucracy, More Data
The Moi Sport online platform itself, which was recently acquired by the Russian Ministry of Sport, already brings athletes, coaches, parents, sports schools, federations, and government bodies into a single digital environment. It automates recordkeeping, competition applications, training schedules, and analytical reporting. The platform is designed to improve the quality of sports training management, performance tracking, process automation, and analytics. As a result, participants across the sports ecosystem are expected to see less paperwork and more efficient coordination.
The creation of the joint venture marks another step toward the digital transformation of sports governance. Sports organizations increasingly need modern digital tools to operate more effectively. These include large databases with digital athlete profiles that list key parameters and competitive achievements, competition calendars, and digital records of sports facilities with their core characteristics. Equally important is the ability to quickly retrieve relevant information from this data pool using defined criteria.
Nash Sport could evolve into a component of the state’s digital infrastructure for sports, enabling integration with federal information systems, data exchange between regions, and higher-quality statistics and planning. Automation is expected to speed up processes ranging from enrollment in sports schools to evaluating the effectiveness of athletic programs. Better governance of youth sports, in turn, should raise the quality of training for young athletes.
Building a Domestic Market
The Ministry of Sport’s position is clear: all IT solutions in this domain should be Russian-made. The joint venture was created to serve that goal. A unified digital framework, common standards, and shared software are expected to make the system more coherent and easier to manage, ultimately supporting higher performance outcomes for Russian athletes.
The Nash Sport joint venture continues a strategic push to deeply integrate the platform into the state information system “Sport,” creating a single digital space for the entire Russian sports industry. Rostelecom’s technological resources further strengthen the project by providing access to national telecom and IT infrastructure.
In the near term, Russian IT companies are expected to actively develop products for sports governance, launch pilot projects in the regions, and later scale digital services nationwide. These efforts are likely to support the growth of the domestic IT market, improve access to and quality of sports training, and, over time, contribute to stronger competitive results for Russian athletes.
