Twentysomething women become mainstream Korean baseball fans

South Korea is a fast-aging country, where one in every five people is 65 years old or older. But it is a different story for the country’s professional baseball league.

Its fans are getting younger and those in their 20s, particularly women, are driving the growth in ticket sales for the 42-year-old baseball league on course for record-high attendance this season.

The growth in ticket sales to women in their 20s was notable. Their share climbed to 23.4% of 2024 Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) league game attendees in the first three months of the season versus 19.6% in the same period a year before.

That contrasted with a decline in the share by men in that age group to 14.8% from 21.2% during the same period. The 2024 season kicked off in March.

Regardless of the club they support or where they live, twentysomethings have become key to the success of the Korean pro baseball league. They accounted for around one-third of the KBO League attendees in 2023 and so far in 2024.

That could be a strange phenomenon from the perspectives of the US and Japanese baseball leagues, where baseball games are seen as a spectator sport for middle-aged men. 

TICKET BUYERS IN THEIR 20S

Women in their 20s made up 47.9% of ticket sales for the March-June period versus 42.3% in 2022, according to Interpark Tickets.

Data from Ticketlink showed women in the 20-29 age group took the biggest share of 41.4% of KBO league game tickets sold on South Korea’s largest sports ticketing platform during the March-June period. That compares with 36.4% for the 2023 season.

In the three months through the end of June, KBO league game attendance surpassed 6 million, according to the organization. It is the shortest period of the league to achieve the milestone.

The average number of spectators per professional baseball game was 14,533 in the first half, a 32% increase compared to the year prior.

If the upward trend continues, attendance will likely reach 10 million for the 2024 season, the first time to hit that mark since the KBO launch in 1982.

Lotte Giants and NC Dinos, which sell tickets on their own websites, saw twentysomethings accounting for 38% and 32.3% of the attendees of their baseball games, respectively. That compares with 31% and 29.8% in 2023.

By gender, women made up 54.4% of ticket sales for all KBO league baseball games in the March-June period, up 3.7 percentage points from the year prior.

Baseball clubs’ aggressive marketing through YouTube channels and social networks has attracted throngs of young women to their stadiums. A popular TV show “Best Baseball” featuring games between retired players and newbies also drew interest in the professional league.

The average number of views of professional baseball-related videos on YouTube this year exceeded 100 million per month, up 30% from the year prior.

Baseball clubs are also active in selling uniforms and products based on their mascots to appeal to young fans while hosting events featuring popular players.

“Games alone are not enough to capture the hearts of the audience,” said a KBO league club official. “We need to keep the attention of fans through daily SNS marketing, selling merchandise such as jerseys and with events.”

Write to Ji-Hee Choi at mymasaki@hankyung.com

Yeonhee Kim edited this article.