II-1. Current Affairs in the Global Sports Industry

The global sports market is recording an annual growth rate of 6% (2005~2017) with the media, league, sports brands, clubs, associations, and fans at the core; in 2017 it grew to become an approximately 90-billion-dollar market, demonstrating rapid growth. The global sports market, together with its average annual growth, is also demonstrating an impressive market expansion to the extent of exceeding the GDP growth rates of the world’s leading nations, by 10,400%.

Despite there being many factors leading up to the rapid growth of the sports industry, the key stands at the ‘athletes’ that produce the sports content itself. In other words, the foundation of the sports industry is laid by the way in which the records of the athletes’ performances expand and reproduce through the global media and internet, hence producing various forms of added value. Therefore, the competitive power is obtained by preoccupying and distributing the athlete’s outstanding performance at high quality, hence the club and agents are endeavoring to recruit athletes with high market value. However, excessive athlete recruitment may bring forth two main consequences – firstly, the issue of cost. In order to obtain information about a so-called ‘high market value athlete’, and to enforce transfers, the club is required to make large payments to the agent. According to the 2018 FIFA TMS, the club pays 7~28% of the athlete’s transfer fee to the agent as a commission; ‘athlete transfer’ involves both dismissing and recruiting, and therefore the agent cost being spent on the collection of athletes’ information and the transfers, is very high compared to the transfer fee itself. Overall, in order to create higher value through collecting high quality athlete information and through transferring athletes in a sensible manner, the club must reduce its reliance on a specific agent, which further requires the development of a platform that distributes comprehensive information regarding to the athletes’ transfer.

Another problem is the management of the athletes’ career. In accordance with the characteristic of the sports industry being focused on star athletes who produce high quality content, managing the career and work experience of non-star athletes (for now) is becoming an important issue. In particular, taking into consideration of the common phenomena of an appreciated athlete having the possibility to lose his/her competitiveness any time, or an athlete unrecognized in South Korea having the possibility to rise in another nation, it can be said that a systemized management of the athletes’ career is an extremely important factor in sustaining the stability of the sports industry. In the case of South Korea, more than 10,000 youths (U12) sign up for the elite curriculum every year, to become a professional soccer player. However, only 4,600 – 40% of the number of registered U12 - of them make it through the competitive youth academy curriculum and reach the age of being able to become a professional player. Furthermore, among the 4,600, only athletes who belong to K3 and above (K3, N league, K2, K1), are recognized as professional players, and it is only the K1, K2, N league athletes who receive stable annual salary.

As a result, 60% of 11,000 youth players give up, and only 20% of mature athletes are able to grow into professional athletes who receive annual salary. In other words, 93% of athletes are unable to become a professional, and 80% of mature athletes are unable to join an club that can significantly aid sustaining his/her life as an athlete.

Athletes who have either failed to become a professional, or have fallen in value as an athlete, are in search for clubs where they can develop and extend their career; however, it is not easy to sign a contract with an agent that would generously provide transfer information and proceed a transfer for him/her whose market value that has already fallen. Therefore, it can be said that the time has come for the development of a platform that produces and provides objective transfer information for the management of careers for the great number of athletes who are in desperate need of transfer information.