A strong box office success broke through the heat wave… Korean professional baseball opens an era of 10 million spectators

Over 10 million spectators in 671 games… The previous largest audience was 8.4 million.

Korean professional baseball has opened the dream era of ‘10 million spectators’.

Even on the 15th, when the heat was still strong, a total of more than 60,000 spectators entered the four stadiums where KBO League games were held.

By the 14th, 9,943,674 people had entered, leaving only 56,326 of the 10 million spectators, and on the 15th, Gwangju Kia Champions Field (20,500 people) and Incheon SSG Landers Field (23,000 people) , a crowd of 10,000 won entered Sajik Stadium in Busan (22,758 people), and the cumulative number of spectators exceeded 10 million before the number of spectators was completed at NC Park in Changwon.

With the average audience exceeding 15,000 (14,908 as of the 14th), this year’s KBO League is continuing its box office success.

In 1982, when professional baseball was launched, a total of 1,438,768 people attended the 240 regular season games.

The KBO League, which exceeded 2 million spectators (2,256,121 spectators) the following year (1983), reached 3 million spectators in 1990 (3,189,488 spectators), 4 million spectators in 1993 (4,437,149 spectators), and 1995. It opened an era of 5 million (5,406,374) spectators.

In 1998, the number of spectators plummeted to 2,639,119, and it suffered a crisis until the early 2000s, but recovered to 5 million (5,256,332) in 2008 when Korean baseball won the gold medal at the Beijing Olympics. It exceeded 6 million (6,810,28 spectators) in 2011 and 7 million (7,156,157 spectators) in 2012.

The KBO League, which exceeded 8 million spectators (8,339,577 people) for the first time in 2016, achieved a ‘new audience record’ by mobilizing 8,406,88 people in 2017.

This year’s KBO League was hot from the start.

103,841 people attended the opening five games, and all stadiums were sold out, signaling the beginning of a box office success.

On June 23, 142,660 people attended 8 games, including a double header, setting the record for the largest daily attendance in KBO League history.

Despite the scorching heat, baseball fans visited the baseball stadium, and on August 18, a new record was set for the largest attendance in KBO League history with 8,475,664.

On August 28th, the number of viewers exceeded 9 million, and on September 15th, the Chuseok holiday, it finally surpassed 10 million viewers.

◇ Date of reaching 1 million spectators in the 2004 season

┌────────┬───────┬──────┐
│Audience │Date │Number of matches │
├────────┼───────┼──────┤
│1 million │April 9 │70 │
├────────┼───────┼──────┤
│2 million │April 27 │148 │
├────────┼───────┼──────┤
│3 million │May 16 │217 │
├────────┼───────┼──────┤
│4 million │June 1 │285 │
├────────┼───────┼──────┤
│5 million │June 15 │345 │
├────────┼───────┼──────┤
│6 million │July 4th │418 │
├────────┼───────┼──────┤
│7 million │July 27 │487 │
├────────┼───────┼──────┤
│8 million │August 13 │549 │
├────────┼───────┼──────┤
│9 million │August 28 │610 │
├────────┼───────┼──────┤
│10 million │September 15 │671 │
└────────┴───────┴──────┘

/Yonhap News