How the First Attempt to Bring Cheerleaders to Russian Hockey Badly Backfired

On June 29, 1993, the Pittsburgh Penguins did something that no NHL team had ever done: They took out an ownership stake in a major Russian hockey team, buying part of CSKA Moscow, better known to this side of the Atlantic as Central Red Army.

The fall of communism in Eastern Europe changed the world, and those changes also reverberated in hockey. Many of the best players from the other side of the Iron Curtain flocked to North America to play hockey in the NHL. Pittsburgh’s decision, spearheaded by owner Howard Baldwin, showed that American capital could flow to Russia even as Russian players traveled in the other direction.

Red Army needed not only American capital but also a fresh approach to the business of hockey. The one-time dynasty had not handled the political changes of the era well; as Jeff Jacobs of the Hartford Courant noted at the time, the club was drawing crowds of 600 people and having trouble paying the few players it could convince to play for it.

Baldwin told Jacobs that he would turn the team around by running them the same way the Penguins were run, including major league marketing and merchandising efforts.

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“[Y]ou will see Red Army merchandise all over the place,” he said. “You'll be sick of it.”

The man charged with running point on the business side of things was a marketer named Steve Warshaw. In his recent autobiography, Slim and None, Baldwin describes Warshaw as a unique fit for special circumstances:

"

[Warshaw] had worn out his welcome at various other sports franchises. He lacked a bit of tact and he kept coming up with crazy ideas, but crazy ideas and someone who would not be deterred were just what the doctor ordered for this unusual situation. So we sent him to Moscow, where we thought he would be tolerated...or at least we wouldn’t have to hear about it. We figured the language barrier might work in our favor.

"

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As Baldwin describes it, Warshaw had some difficulty with old-school coach Viktor Tikhonov, but his promotions brought in crowds. The team hosted a Free Beer night, raffled off a Jeep and even had success offering more mundane incentives, like toilet paper and toothpaste.  

They also experimented with another marketing gimmick: cheerleaders. While cheerleaders are a common sight at hockey games now, they weren’t part of the culture in the early 1990s in the United States—and certainly not in Russia. Warshaw decided that introducing them at Red Army games might help with attendance.

He even had an idea of where to find them and felt confident in his plan. Baldwin writes:

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Near the arena complex in Moscow was a strip bar, and Stevie figured maybe the girls would want to make a little extra cash on the side, so he proposed that they come and cheer at the games. Remember, he spoke no Russian. So he hired some of them to entertain our crowds, and on the first night the cheerleaders were going to perform their dance on the ice between the first and second periods. The crowd was excited, and Steve was sitting in the stands feeling smug about his new “event.”

"

A brash American marketer who doesn’t speak a word of Russian feeling smug about his newly hired cheerleaders who happen to be entertainers at a strip club? There’s only one way that story can end.

Sure enough, shortly after the music started, the women’s cheerleading outfits started coming off. The stands erupted with appreciative shouting, except for what Baldwin describes as Warshaw’s “primal scream” as he flew out of his seat and bolted to the ice to halt the proceedings.

That ended Red Army’s experiment with cheerleaders, though Baldwin notes that it wasn’t entirely unsuccessful. The team sold out its next game.

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The change in ownership had the desired effect; the team got better both on the ice and on the balance sheet thanks to sponsorship deals and improved attendance. However, after two seasons, the business climate deteriorated, and after an attempted shakedown, Baldwin and his people decided to get out.

But while the Americans left, many of their ideas stayed behind and were incorporated into Russian hockey. Cheerleaders, despite that false start, are one of those surviving ideas; they’re a common sight around the KHL, including at CSKA Moscow games.