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KBO regular season attendances surpasses 200 million over 44 years

Published: 12 Sep. 2025, 14:25

Fans cheer during a KBO game between the LG Twins and Kiwoom Heroes at Jamsil Baseball Stadium in southern Seoul on Aug. 29. [NEWS1]

The KBO has surpassed 200 million in cumulative regular season attendance over 44 seasons.

The KBO announced Friday that total attendance reached 200,007,811 through Sept. 11.

From its launch in 1982, the league had drawn 188,841,044 spectators to regular-season games through the end of the 2024 season. An additional 11,159,737 fans have attended games so far this year, pushing the league past the 200 million milestone. Across 23,511 regular-season games, the league has averaged 8,507 spectators per game.

The league was inaugurated on March 27, 1982. With six founding teams and a 240-game regular season schedule, the KBO League attracted 1,438,768 spectators in its inaugural year. Annual attendance reached 2 million in 1983, 3 million in 1990, 4 million in 1993 and 5 million in 1995.

After stagnating in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the league regained momentum following Korea’s gold medal win at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, again surpassing 5 million annual attendance. It broke the 6 million mark in 2011 and the 7 million mark in 2012.

The league expanded to 10 teams in 2015. In 2024, it became the first professional sports league in Korea to attract more than 10 million spectators in a single season, solidifying its position as the country’s premier professional sport. The KBO is currently on pace to top 12 million fans this year, which would set a new record.

By team, the LG Twins — including their predecessor, the MBC Blue Dragons — have drawn the largest cumulative crowd with 35.93 million fans, followed by the Lotte Giants with 31.93 million and the Doosan Bears, including its predecessor OB Bears, with 30.34 million.

“We will continue striving to make baseball more enjoyable and accessible for all fans by advancing our ‘fan-first’ initiatives, upgrading infrastructure and introducing fan-friendly policies,” the KBO said in a statement.

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
BY KO BONG-JUN [[email protected]]