The highlight of the ‘One Platform’
men’s professional basketball (KBL) 2022-23 season, which led to the spring of professional basketball, is being held in the championship match (4 out of 7). Seoul SK Knights and Anyang KGC Ginseng Corporation met in the championship game for two consecutive seasons.
In the first season after the COVID-19 quarantine was eased, KBL set a meaningful record. Ticket revenue from 10 stadiums exceeded 8 billion won for the first time in 25 years since the league was launched in 1997. Including the championship game, it is expected to reach 8.5 billion won. The total number of spectators has only recovered to about 70% of its pre-coronavirus level. But how did the admission revenue hit the all-time high? The main role that brought back ‘Basketball Spring’ was ‘platform integration’.
Price per guest, from 8,300 won to 12,500 won
The Korea Professional Sports Association (KPSA) is an organization that has seven institutions (basketball and golf separate for men and women) in five domestic professional events (soccer, baseball, volleyball, basketball, and golf) as members. Receives funds from the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and is in charge of support and plans for the development of each event. In 2020, KSPA proposed platform integration to KBL. The plan was to integrate the main functions of the homepages operated by each of the 10 clubs into KBL to conduct ticket reservations and sales, promotion and marketing, member management, and souvenir sales. The homepages of each club were unprofessional compared to the management manpower and budget. 메이저사이트
After 8 months of work and pilot operation, an integrated DB was established on the KBL website in December 2020. The number of subscribers exceeded 100,000 in November 2021, and after taking 150,000 in March 2022, the number of subscribers as of April 28 this year is 278,231.
An important change occurred as the number of integrated DB members increased. The percentage of paid spectators has risen significantly. This is thanks to the accumulation of basic information (address, age, gender, favorite teams and players, etc.) of members, enabling customized marketing for them. The percentage of paid spectators, which was 77% in the 2018-19 season, exceeded 90% in 5 years. As the number of paid spectators increased, the number of ‘free guests’ from the club’s parent company and the home game local government naturally decreased. Of course, the unit price (cost per person to watch the game) went up. The unit price for the 2018-19 season was 8,338 won, but it increased to 12,493 won this season.