The 2023 KBO League, which is still battling to the finish line, has reached 8 million fans in the pennant race for the first time in five years.
With two days to go, the KBO League drew 51,451 fans for three games, including the Samsung Lions-NC Dinos (Changwon) and Lotte Giants-Hanwha Eagles (Daejeon), with the Doosan Bears-LG Twins game at Jamsil Stadium on the 15th selling out before kickoff.
The All-Pro Baseball League, which had 7.984 million fans the previous day, recorded a cumulative attendance of 8.036 million, surpassing the 8 million mark for the first time in five years since 2018.
It is the fourth time in the history of the KBO, which was founded in 1982, that the league has surpassed the 8 million mark, following the 2016-2018 period.
By club, the LG Twins had the highest attendance with 1.22 million (16,703 average), followed by the SSG Landers with 1.07 million (14,545 average).
The average attendance per game for the 10 clubs through the previous day was 11,214, a 34% increase over the same number of games last year.
The Kiwoom Heroes, who call the Gocheok SkyDome home, saw the largest increase in attendance over last year, with a 71% increase, followed by the Hanwha Eagles (56%) and NC Dinos (54%).
This season, the pennant race has been disrupted by frequent rains and heat waves, but fans have been paying close attention as the race for the top spot has come down to the wire.
In particular, after reaching the 7 million mark on Sept. 24, the number of spectators reached 8 million in just 74 games, the lowest number of games ever for the division.
With the third through fifth places still undecided with only five games remaining out of a total of 720 games, attention is focused on whether the All-Pro Baseball League can surpass the 2018 season’s 8,073,742 fans to record the third highest attendance in history. 파워볼분석