OREANDA-NEWS. September 28, 2010. SOGAZ Insurance Group, as the League's General Partner, prolonged its agreement with the Kontinental Hockey League. The coming season will mark the third year of fruitful and mutually beneficial cooperation between the KHL and SOGAZ Group. As during prior seasons, SOGAZ will provide insurance to the hockey players in the championship and to the League and its member hockey teams for civil liabilities related to organization of mass entertainment events.

The partnership extends far beyond the KHL championship. SOGAZ is also the General Partner for exhibition games between KHL and NHL teams, which will be held in Russia for the first time in twenty years. On the 4th of October SKA will meet Carolina Hurricanes in Saint-Petersburg, and on the 6th of October in Riga the city team Dinamo will face Phoenix Coyotes.

SOGAZ Insurance Group and the Kontinental Hockey League express confidence in the success of the coming season, as well as of several joint projects, and thus lay a foundation for mutually beneficial cooperation in the future.

"The Kontinental Hockey League is the most progressive sports project in modern Russia, from a commercial point of view. Marketing is as important here as the sport itself", says Aleksey Smertin, Marketing Director of SOGAZ Insurance Group. "There's still much left to do, but the League's transparency and desire to build successful relations with sponsors, member clubs and players using the same principles as the most successful sport leagues in the world is attractive for us. The cooperation between SOGAZ and KHL is indeed mutually beneficial."

"Working with SOGAZ is a pleasure", notes Ilya Kochevrin, KHL Vice-President for Commercial Relations and Communications. "The company becomes our General Partner for the third season in a row, and I can testify that our work is an example of real, mutually beneficial cooperation"

The Kontinental Hockey League runs the main national hockey championship, the Kontinental Hockey League championship – Russian Open Hockey Championship. The KHL includes 23 clubs from Russia, Belarus, Latvia and Kazakhstan. According to the three-year contract with the Ice Hockey Federation of Russia, the KHL championship also determines who is awarded the title of the Champion of Russia.