COVID19: Impact on the Korean Sports Market

With the Olympics postponed due to the pandemic, the KBO League (baseball), started on May 5th, and the K League, K1 (football) began on May 8th which is two months later than the usual schedule. In addition to K1 and K2, K3 and K4 the semi-professional leagues, that were merged this year with the elimination of the National League (div.3), have started the season too.

Both baseball and football have been around for two months since the start of the season, but they are still going on without spectators. Moreover, because of the signs of a second pandemic wave in Korea, the plan to switch to an open match by the end of June has become uncertain.

The situation is even more difficult at the youth level. The youth leagues including university leagues are still waiting for the start. Because of the absence of a pro-draft system in football, the dependency of the school leagues in Korea is very high. As the progress of this season is uncertain, there will be a lot of systemic changes, and confusion will be caused accordingly.

Not only domestic players but also foreign players are affected by the pandemic too. The delay of the season resulted in fewer matches before the summer transfer window open which means it caused a lack of opportunities for new players to prove their abilities. Also, the clubs cannot dispatch scout teams abroad and even if they sign the new foreign players, due to the government policy, they have to be in mandatory 2 weeks of self-isolation.

COVID19 is affecting policies and sports organizations that are operated by the government. National Sports Games are expecting to be canceled this year, and other provincial or municipal levels of events are also either being canceled or postponed. The budgets set aside for sports are now being spent on emergency medical and welfare budgets.

The provincial-level sports organizations are encouraging each city sports association to produce online sports contents such as home training lessons through their SNS channels after finding it difficult to conduct face-to-face programs. They are carefully observing the current situation and discussing when to resume the programs.

Same as any other country, Korea is implementing emergency policies such as ‘social distancing’ and ‘2 weeks of self-isolation’, but most of the businesses except schools and sports-related public facilities have been operating normally without being closed. The professional sports leagues were also able to get past a difficult time and “surviving” although it started later than usual, as many clubs are running on the government budget. Now the half of 2020 has passed, Korean sports markets are agonizing over the survival of the COVID19 and post-COVID19 era.