Domestic interest in the England Professional Football Championship (second division) is growing with the addition of Korean players and OTT broadcasting.메이저놀이터
K-League All-Star Bae Jun-ho (20) joined England Championship Stoke City on September 1 (Korean time) with a transfer fee of 2 million euros (approximately 2.9 billion won) from Daejeon Hana Citizen. His contract period runs until June 2027.
Hwang Ui-jo (31), the top scorer at the 2018 Jakarta-Palembang Asian Games in Indonesia, was loaned from Nottingham Forest of the English Premier League (EPL) to Norwich City of the second division for the remainder of the season on September 2. The 2023-24 Championship will be broadcast in Korea through ‘Coupang Play’.
Bae Jun-ho, the day after advancing to the second division of English professional football. Photo = Stoke City official SNS
The EPL, which is ranked first in the European Football Association (UEFA) rankings, is also famous in Korea. It is a global leader not only in terms of level but also in commercial scale.
According to ‘Transfermarkt’, a media outlet specializing in the transfer market, England’s second division is also one of only 11 ‘club soccer leagues in the world with a total player value of more than 1 billion euros (1.4239 trillion won)’.
The remaining 10 club soccer stages are all in the first division. From an economic perspective, you can see how unrivaled the English Championship is in the second division.
Hwang Ui-jo is filming a profile for the 2023-24 England Championship. Photo = Norwich City official SNS
The only club soccer stages bigger than England’s second division are ▲EPL, ▲Spanish La Liga, ▲Italian Serie A, ▲German Bundesliga, and ▲French Ligue 1, which are considered ‘Europe’s top 5’ on a commercial scale.
Brazil’s Serie A in South America and Major League Soccer (MLS) in North America also have lower total player market values than the English Championship. The economic power of Portugal’s Primeira Liga and Turkuy Super Liga is also lower than that of England’s second division.
Saudi Arabia, ranked first in the 2023-24 Asian Football Confederation (AFC) league rankings, is rapidly increasing its size by recruiting famous stars such as Cristiano Ronaldo (38, Portugal).
The summer transfer window for Saudi Arabia’s first division league closes on September 20. Although there are still three weeks left, the total player value as of September 5 is 1.09 billion euros (1.552 trillion won), which is 64.1% of the English second division league (1.7 billion euros, 2.4206 trillion won).