Local budgets in Ukraine during wartime: Challenges, adaptation strategies, and the role of participatory budgeting

The article deals with eSports as a perspective kind of commercial activity. The research urgency is determined by the fact that, given the active increase of eSports market with growth rates of more than 30% per year, the types of commercial activities in this field and in scientific papers are not studied in an adequate degree.

The purpose of the article is to evaluate the commercial activity development in eSports and to determine the perspectives for its further growth in Ukraine. In order to determine the key types of commercial activity in eSports, the main sources of revenue in this area compared to sports were investigated, which showed a large unrealized potential for increasing revenues from the sale of tickets to competitions, the realization of broadcasting rights and merchandising. The study also showed that the largest number of income sources in eSports is at the stage of cyber-tournaments, which can be explained by a large consumer audience at this stage. However, unlike the esports world practice, computer game producers and well-known manufacturers of consumer goods in Ukraine do not finance domestic competitions, and, therefore, this stage of commercial activity remains at a low level. In modern conditions, among the types of eSports activities in Ukraine, only the computer games production and the cyber-racers game are properly developed.

According to authors, to improve the eSports development in Ukraine, creating the national system of regular eSports competitions is needed, which will form the basis for the development of most types of commercial activities that are part of the cyber-tournaments. To do this, one needs to create appropriate platforms, as well as improve communications with fans in social networks and at amateur competitions. All this will make eSports a highly profitable business in Ukraine.

In the current conditions of the Ukrainian economy, which is characterized by crisis phenomena and frequent changes in legislation, the insurance organizations are facing a number of difficulties in maintaining their financial sustainability. Moreover, these processes take place under the increased requirements for solvency of insurers. However, a significant part of domestic insurance companies is financially unstable, which is conditioned not only by the lack of funds, but also by the low level of management. This situation hinders the further development of the insurance market in Ukraine and has a negative impact on all areas of the domestic financial system and prevents it from successful integration into the European financial field. In order to address this problem, it is necessary to distinguish the key groups of risks that affect the financial sustainability of insurance organizations, among which there are the following: insurance, strategic, market risk, risk of inefficient capital structure, risk of limiting the insurance company’s liquidity, tax risk, investment risk, operational risk, the risk of ineffective organizational structure of the enterprise, and information risk. It should be noted that under conditions of changing environment, the impact of these risks only increases, and therefore the task of minimizing the impact of these risks on the activities of insurance companies is highly important. Accordingly, the authors of the article proposed a four-stage strategy to manage the financial sustainability of the insurance company, the purpose of which is to identify the risks of limiting the insurer’s financial sustainability, their qualitative and quantitative assessment, as well as the development and implementation of appropriate measures to minimize and eliminate unacceptable consequences.

At the beginning of 2020, the world faced the most frightening threat to the population’s health – COVID-19 pandemic. For this reason, the international institutions, governments of countries and various organizations are forced to use unprecedented restrictive measures in many spheres of activity. As a result, the economies of the countries all over the world are significantly affected and are on the verge of crisis. This paper presents examples of economic consequences of COVID-19 pandemic for different countries of the world and analyzes still few scientific works, which study the influence of pandemic on their economies. The article generalizes the legislative and anti-crisis measures of the Ukrainian Government, as well as the National Bank of Ukraine and other state authorities. It is evidenced that at the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020, Ukraine witnessed a significant decrease in GDP growth rate, reduction of industrial production and electricity production. The financial indicators also underwent significant losses, particularly the unemployment rate increased as thousands and thousands of labor migrants have returned to Ukraine from European and other countries. The article proves the inconsistency and unprofessionalism of such restrictive and regulatory measures. Finally, the necessity is substantiated to combine the methods of market economy and state regulation. The compulsory steps are offered, which would minimize the losses of the state and its population during this economic crisis.