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SK Wyverns baseball team will be sold to E-Mart. SK Group decided to hand over the club to Shinsegae Group after 21 years of acquiring and operating Ssangbangwool Raiders in 2000.
According to the management and investment banking (IB) industry on the 25th, E-Mart plans to conclude negotiations with SK Telecom, the largest shareholder in SK Wyverns, to acquire SK Wyverns and sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) soon. E-Mart plans to occupy the board of directors on the 26th to confirm the SK Wyverns acquisition plan.
An E-Mart official said: “We have been pursuing the acquisition of the baseball team for some years,” and “We decided to acquire the SK Wyverns baseball team, which is popular with young people, to strengthen the points of contact with E-Clients of Mart and Shinsegae Group ”. SK Telecom also said: “We are discussing with Shinsegae Group about the direction of the development of professional baseball.”
The specific purchase method and price are unknown. In the marketplace, if Doosan creditors sold the Doosan Bears baseball team, the fair price is estimated to be around 200 billion won.
E-Mart’s acquisition of SK Wyverns is analyzed to reflect the strong will of Shinsegae Group Vice President Jeong Yong-jin. Vice President Chung has expressed his willingness to provide an experience-type space that can only be enjoyed offline, even when the hub of shopping is shifting to online. When the acquisition is completed, attention will be drawn to the direction of the stake in the Samsung Lions baseball team held by Shinsegae Group. Shinsegae is the third largest shareholder with a 14.5% stake in Samsung Lions.
SK Group did not disclose the reason for the sale of the SK Wyverns club. SK Wyverns is 100% owned by SK Telecom, but the owner is Choi Chang-won, a cousin of SK Group President and Vice President of SK Discovery, Choi Chang-won.
SK Wyverns has established itself as a strong team in the league by advancing to the postseason 12 times and winning the Korean Series 4 times. SK Wyverns did not stand out in terms of earnings, crossing the breakeven point every year.
Strategy speed on all lines
Shinsegae Vice President Jeong Yong-jin (photo) used to emphasize “Expanding the range” for years. In 2015, at a special conference for executives and employees, he ordered ‘Transformation to break the frame’ and said: “The Shinsegae Group’s competitors are not only companies such as food, clothing and appliances, but also baseball fields and amusement parks. that attract our potential customers on the weekends. In this year’s New Years speech, a sense of crisis was created by saying, “A company that does not obsess over changing customer demands will inevitably be eliminated.” E-Mart’s acquisition of SK Wyverns is seen as a strategy to address comprehensive business competition across industry boundaries.
E-Mart expands marketing
The business community sees the acquisition of E-Mart as part of a “comprehensive” strategy combining online and offline channels. In particular, SSG.com decided to take over the baseball team to strengthen online distribution. An E-Mart official predicted: “Young baseball fans are generally active on social media as well.” “If we allow them to experience the various experimental elements of E-Mart on the baseball field, the synergy effect will be significant.”
Some say this year is the right time to take over the baseball team. If the new coronavirus infection (Corona 19) is alleviated, millions of viewers are expected to return to the baseball field. In 2017, the annual number of professional baseball viewers reached 8.4 million. In 2019, it was 7.29 million. Last year, it fell to the 330,000 level due to neglected gambling. An official of a major sports team predicted that, considering the brand power of E-Mart, as well as Jung Yong-jin, it will lead to an increase in the number of viewers in terms of popularity of professional baseball. The addition of ‘Taekjin hyung’ to ‘Yongjin hyung’ is expected to contribute to the development of national professional baseball.
Vice President Chung is known to have recently focused on digital marketing. He is famous for being an entrepreneur who manages his own account on Facebook and Instagram, and communicates with the public without prior notice.
Distribution is during the platforming war
In the distribution industry, E-Mart’s decision is interpreted as not irrelevant to the fact that the distribution industry is evolving into a platform war. It is said that it is difficult to survive without expanding the range of existing distributions, such as hypermarkets, department stores and convenience stores, and expanding the point of contact with consumers. Coupang only topped 22 billion won last year with express delivery as a weapon. This is a scale that far exceeded E-Mart’s total sales last year (on a separate basis) of 15 trillion won. Naver Shopping and Kakao Commerce, respectively, are taking the e-commerce (e-commerce) market by storm with powerful platforms like search and chat, respectively.
The appearance of the “fan platform” can be interpreted in the same context. On the 15th, NCsoft announced that it will launch ‘Universo’, an app that distributes K-pop content, early next year. In the industry, there is even the end that the fan platform can become a strong competitor to the existing distribution industry by associating the “commerce” function with content distribution. It is for this reason that Naver is eager to secure Hallyu content by teaming up with SM Entertainment after entering purchases.
Meanwhile, regarding the sale of the SK Group baseball team, there are interpretations that SK is taking steps to organize the entire sports team. Apart from handball, whose president Tae-won Choi is the president of the association, baseball and basketball teams can be sold sequentially.
Reporter Park Donghui / Kyungmin Kang / Junho Cha [email protected]
