Pro Baseball Revenue Surpasses 150 Billion Won... Increased 71 Times Over 42 Years

The Era of Over 10 Million Cumulative Spectators for the First Time

The 2024 professional baseball season has ushered in the era of 10 million cumulative spectators for the first time in domestic professional sports history. It has also pioneered a new milestone in ticket revenue.

According to 'Yonhap News' on the 18th, the six domestic professional baseball teams have already set a new record for total season attendance, and ticket revenue has surged dramatically.

As of this date, 95% of the entire regular season games (720 games) have been played. Currently, the ticket revenue of the 10 teams stands at 150,564,935,895 KRW, surpassing 150 billion KRW for the first time since the launch of professional baseball in 1982.

The KBO League exceeded 100 billion KRW in ticket revenue for the first time last year. The total revenue that year was 123,333,097,171 KRW. This year, attendance has increased by 34% compared to the same period last year, and thanks to this, ticket revenue has surpassed 150 billion KRW even before the season ends.

The KBO League surpassed 10 million cumulative spectators for the first time in history on the 15th, reaching a total of 10,000,758 attendees. [Image source=Yonhap News]

This year's ticket revenue is an astonishing 71.4 times that of 1982, the year the league was founded (2.1 billion KRW). The KBO League entered the 10 billion KRW ticket revenue era in 1991 and surpassed 20 billion KRW in 1995.

After a brief slump, the league consecutively broke records with 30 billion KRW in 2009, 40 billion KRW in 2010, 50 billion KRW in 2011, and 60 billion KRW in 2012. In 2015, when the 10-team system was established, ticket revenue exceeded 70 billion KRW, marking the beginning of the full-fledged professional sports industry era, and it surpassed 90 billion KRW in 2018.

Compared to last year on the same number of games, league attendance increased by 34% and ticket revenue by 30% this year. The reason attendance and ticket revenue do not increase proportionally is due to factors such as differentiated ticket pricing between weekdays and weekends and teams' per-customer spending policies.

Meanwhile, Hanwha, which achieved the highest number of sellouts among the 10 teams this year with 44 games, saw its ticket revenue surge by 47% compared to the previous year. For the regular season champion KIA, attendance increased by 68% and ticket revenue by 44% compared to last year.

In addition, six teams including Samsung Lions, kt wiz, SSG Landers, Hanwha, and Kiwoom Heroes set new cumulative season attendance records, and LG Twins are on the verge of setting a new attendance record for the first time in 11 years and reaching 1.3 million spectators at Jamsil Stadium for the first time.