Eventually, the era of "Post Kim Yeon-kyung"... Yeo Bae, why VNL propaganda is urgently needed
Eventually, the era of "Post Kim Yeon-kyung"... Yeo Bae, why VNL propaganda is urgently needed
Blog Article
The average viewership of women in the V-League during the 2024-25 season was 1.25 percent. The ratings for the fifth game (3.08 percent) of the championship game between Heungkuk Life Insurance Co. and Chung Kwan-jang, which took place on March 14, also ranked second in the history based on one game. All of these results are meaningful in that it is the last season and the last game on the professional stage after Kim Yeon-koung, dubbed "Volleyball Empress," announced her retirement.
Analysts say that the V-League has already peaked in terms of figures that can provide content power, such as crowd mobilization, viewer ratings, and admission revenue. Kim Yeon-kyung left the court as a player on the 13th, playing a retirement game through a charity competition (KYK Invitational) organized by the foundation where she is the chairman of the board. In other words, the V-League has faced a predicted crisis.
When Kim was present, a generational change should have occurred. However, the pace of growth of the next generation of strikers did not meet expectations. Lee Jae-young, who was considered Kim's successor, was kicked out of the V-League last year due to school violence. If veteran players who led Korean women's volleyball to its heyday in international competitions along with Yang Hyo-jin and Kim Soo-ji retire, it is highly likely that the V-League's popularity will further decline.
Professional baseball, which was in a dark age, has seen its interest in the league rise again after advancing to the semifinals of the 2006 World Baseball Classic (WBC) and winning the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Young players, including Ryu Hyun-jin and Kim Kwang-hyun, who were active at the time, dominated the domestic stage and advanced to the Major League (MLB), raising the status of Korean baseball and expanding their fandom.
The women's national volleyball team will participate in the 2025 International Volleyball Federation (FIVB) Volleyball Nations League (VNL). The Korean national volleyball team departed on Friday for Brazil, where four matches (Germany, Italy, the Czech Republic and the U.S.) will be held in the first week of the league.
Women's volleyball made disastrous results at international competitions after the "golden generation" who led the team to the semifinals of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics announced its retirement from the national team. They lost all 12 games in the 2022 and 2023 VNL, respectively, and finished fifth at the 2023 Hangzhou Asian Games. The goal of this year's VNL announced by Fernando Morales, the coach of the women's national team, is to avoid the bottom and not lose the right to participate in the competition. It is a goal setting that does not give expectations to volleyball fans.
For the past three years (2022-2024), despite sluggish performance in international competitions, Kim Yeon-koung enabled the team to maintain its success in the V-League. Now the situation has changed. Many players are said to lack skills compared to their already high price. If they reveal that they were "frogs in the well" at international competitions, their disappointment in volleyball fans will inevitably grow.
Kim said, "In order to strengthen competitiveness in international competitions, we need to establish a system to link and manage youth and adult national teams." She also said, "We need to elevate the standard of V-League by recruiting foreign players through free agency instead of the existing tryouts (open selection of players). 먹튀검증
Both the management organization and the club should make moves to strengthen their international competitiveness in a long-term perspective. The Korean team should do well in the upcoming VNL competition. If the Korean team immediately reveals its bare face with disastrous results at a time when it can no longer rely on the "Kim Yeon-kyung effect," the aftermath will directly lead to a decline in content power in the V League.