The strategy of Shakhtar football club is aimed at achieving a state when the club fully covers its costs and becomes profitable, Shakhtar CEO Serhiy Palkin said.

"By and large, this is our club's development strategy: to achieve a situation where we will fully cover our costs and become profitable. When they say that clubs exist under one law and business companies under others, this is not the case. "Everywhere there is one law. If the football club today is focused on making money and being profitable, then this factor will directly affect sports results, and sports results – the profitability factor. These are such interconnected things," he said in an exclusive statement in the interview with Interfax-Ukraine.

Palkin said that the team's successful performance in the Champions League and UEFA Europa League is one of the defining elements for the club's business strategy and increase its capitalization.

He said that the performance in the group stage of the Champions League and the subsequent one in the Europa League this season, where Shakhtar reached the semifinals, in which they will play on August 17 in Dusseldorf, Germany, with Inter, has already brought the club about EUR 50 million.

According to him, today Shakhtar is the break-even club. I will say that if we were at Donbas Arena today, we would be profitable, and the fact that we lost such the arena makes its adjustments. In the 2013-2014 season, we had an average attendance of 42,000 people. Ukrainian championship [with a capacity of about 52,300 people]. We sold all the VIP-lodges, season tickets. We earned on tickets in those days more than $10 million," he said.