After 29 years atop the Korean Baseball Organization, the LG Twins are sitting pretty.
With LG’s victory, the 2023 baseball schedule was finalized on Wednesday, and the size of the dividends that will go to the five teams that made it to the postseason was also finalized.
According to Article 47 of the KBO League Regulations, the KBO Secretariat will distribute the remaining amount of postseason gate receipts, excluding all expenses incurred for the event, to the five teams that played in the postseason as dividends.
The first-place team in the regular season gets 20 percent of the dividend, and the rest is divided into 50 percent for the Korean Series winner, 24 percent for the runner-up, 14 percent for the team that lost in the playoffs, 9 percent for the team that lost in the semi-playoffs, and 3 percent for the team that lost in the wild-card game.
According to the KBO, gate receipts for all 14 postseason games this year totaled about 9.62 billion won.
After subtracting various expenses, which are estimated to be 49 percent, 4.9 billion won will be distributed to the five teams.
LG will receive 20 percent, or 980 million won, for finishing first in the regular season. Then, by winning the Korean Series, it will receive another 1.963 billion won, half of the remaining 3.927 billion won.
Combined, the two amounts to about 2.94 billion won in championship dividends for LG.
On top of that, there are bonuses from the parent company.
The KBO secretariat and the 10 clubs agreed to cap the amount of money that can be paid out based on performance (the so-called merit system), so the parent company of the winning team can give a championship bonus of up to 50 percent of the total dividend received by the baseball team.
So, LG Group would give the team about 1.47 billion won, or 50% of its 2.94 billion won in dividends, as a championship bonus.
Combined, this brings the LG Twins’ championship bonus to 4.41 billion won.
Add to that the Rolex watch left by LG Chairman Koo Bon-moo and a bottle of Awamori shochu to be opened when the team wins the next championship, and LG’s legacy, which cannot be converted into money, is unsealed and revealed to the world after 29 years.
While there is nothing in the KBO’s rules that explicitly states a violation of the “merit system,” a team is penalized if it breaks the cap and pays out more than 50 percent of its dividends in bonuses.
According to Articles 82 and 83 of the Baseball Constitution, any economic benefit a team provides to a player in addition to salary, such as money or goods, is considered a down payment.
Paying a bonus that exceeds the upper limit is tantamount to violating the signing bonus rule, and the KBO will fine the club 1 billion won and revoke its right to a second-round pick in the next rookie draft.
The Korean Series runner-up KT WIZ will receive about 942.5 million won, the NC Dinos will receive 549.8 million won, the SSG Landers will receive 353.4 million won, and the Doosan Bears will receive about 117.8 million won. 먹튀검증