[Anchor]

Following the North and Central American World Cup, the structural problems behind the decline of South Korean football are being laid bare. One of the root causes is the shaky ecosystem of professional football, which should serve as its foundation. According to an exhaustive investigation of professional football clubs by SBS, the vast majority operate in name only as "professionals," finding themselves virtually unable to function without massive tax subsidies.

First, a report by reporter Lee Jeong-Chan.

[Reporter]

Currently, the K League's first and second divisions consist of a total of 29 teams, 17 of which are so-called "regional citizen clubs" that receive support from local governments.

Criticism has persisted that these citizen clubs rely on government "subsidies" funded by local taxpayers instead of generating their own revenue, but an exhaustive SBS investigation revealed that the situation is far more severe than expected.

Analyzing the financial data of 14 clubs, excluding three newly joined teams this year, these 14 teams received a total of 140.1 billion won in subsidies from local governments last year, accounting for 64% of their total revenue.

Among them, only three clubs—Gangwon, Daegu, and Incheon, which have longer histories and operate in the form of stock corporations—had higher independent revenues than their subsidies.

Excluding these three, the dependency rate on subsidies for the remaining 11 teams reaches 73.4%. Even if the independent revenues of all 11 teams are combined, they fall short of the independent revenues of Gangwon, Daegu, and Incheon.

What is even more alarming is that this level of subsidy is still not enough for the survival of regional citizen clubs.

Paju faced the crisis of unpaid wages from the very first year of its professional transition, while Gimhae managed only two wins in its debut season, placing its very existence at a crossroads.

[Jeong Young-du / Mayor of Gimhae: If we determine that there is neither financial sustainability nor public interest, as the club owner, I will have no choice but to make a decisive decision.]

Gimpo, whose accounting staff member was arrested over suspicions of embezzling around 8 billion won, is barely surviving by patching up its financial holes with supplementary budgets.

This contrasts sharply with major European leagues operating professionally on sponsorship revenues, ticket and merchandise sales, and broadcasting rights, as well as with domestic professional baseball, which has enhanced its self-sufficiency by reducing the proportion of parent company support from 41% in 2018 to 25% last year.

(Video by Yoo Dong-hyuk and Hwang In-seok | Video Editing by Lee Jae-sung | Design by Lim Chan-hyuk)