NC Dinos Dream of 'First Surplus Club' in Professional Baseball
NC Dinos Dream of 'First Surplus Club' in Professional Baseball
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The NC Dinos, a professional baseball team, was founded in 2011 and has not had a long history.토토사이트
NC, which is based in Changwon, Masan and Jinhae, South Gyeongsang Province, has the smallest population among the 10 teams with about 1 million people. It is the smallest market among local teams as well as teams based in the Seoul metropolitan area where 10 million people live together.
In addition, it is unusual that there are still quite a lot of Lotte fans in the NC base because the current Changwon area was based in Lotte Giants before the establishment of NC.
However, NC has attracted 749,000 spectators at home games of the KBO League this season. This is the highest number since the foundation of the team. It is the second time that NC has exceeded 700,000 spectators this year, following 710,000 in 2019, the first year when it moved to Changwon NC Park.
Above all, this year is the first time that NC has exceeded the average home crowd of 10,000. This is the percentage of 1 in 100 people who visited the ballpark on the day of the home game.
Although it has made remarkable achievements, the limitations of the "small market" are also clear, with NC at the bottom of this year's crowd.
It is half the number of LG Twins' 1,397,000 who drew the largest number of spectators.
NC, which began to pave the way to an "emerging reputation" by winning the Korean Series in 2020, appointed CEO Lee Jin-man in early 2022 and started hunting two rabbits for performance and marketing.
Lee Jin-man served as the head of Nexen Tire's strategic planning department and is a professional manager who has completed a master's degree in business administration in the United States.
CEO Lee said, "The most important thing in sports marketing is also team performance," adding, "In terms of team marketing, we are making a lot of efforts to achieve maximum performance regardless of team performance."
CEO Lee continued, "Most of all, we have introduced various ideas to maximize experience and utility when fans come to the ballpark," adding, "Most teams allow fans to enter from two hours before the start of the game, but NC sells separate tickets for players from practice hours at a very inexpensive price so that they can see even more."
It created a space to enjoy mini-baseball games in the stadium, providing fans with opportunities to pitch or hit against NC players themselves, and allowing them to take commemorative photos with virtual NC players with augmented reality (AR) technology.
In addition to season tickets and game-day tickets, regular tickets tying specific opposing team games or specific periods, and marketing strategies such as selling tickets at a low price after a certain period of time after the start of the game are also being implemented.
CEO Lee said, "The hamburger franchise run by former major leaguer and broadcaster Kim Byung-hyun has also attracted the ballpark, and Kim Byung-hyun sometimes comes to meet with fans in person," adding, "We are also engaged in profit activities through the off-season baseball stadium facility rental project."
Through the club's YouTube channel, a love reality program called "I Am Home Run," a parody of the popular TV entertainment program "I Am Solo," or through collaboration with the influencer "Ujung Ying," it is trying to expand the base of baseball fans.
"Through our hard work, we have reduced the deficit of the club, which was more than 30 billion won two years ago, to just over 10 billion won this year," CEO Lee said. "The financial independence of the parent company has risen to 80%, and if this trend continues, we are hoping to become the first surplus club in the next few years."
In terms of the bottom line of the 10 teams, NC is ranked No. 1 this year. However, NC ranked ninth with 61 wins and 81 losses this season.