Concerns have finally become a reality when the criteria for establishing a new team have to be checked. It is known that Goyang Carrot, a new professional basketball club, is in the process of selling the parent company, Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering, due to deteriorating management, shocking basketball fans. If the sale goes through, Carrot will set a disgraceful record as a short-lived club that disappeared into history in just one season.
On February 7th, major media outlets including Yonhap News reported that Day One Sports, the operator of Carrot, is promoting a sale and is currently negotiating with a company to acquire the basketball team. Day One Sports is a corporation with Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering as its parent company, and was re-founded by acquiring the Goyang Orion basketball team in 2022. The team name was decided as Goyang Carrot, with Carrot Insurance as the naming sponsor.
In addition, Day One appointed Hur Jae, who was raising his stock price as a basketball legend and broadcaster, as co-CEO, and recruited coach Kim Seung-gi, who won the championship of Anyang KGC, and shooter Jeon Seong-hyun, drawing attention. Although Goyang Carrot is a new team, it is competing in the playoffs for the round of 6 with a win rate of over 50% this season with 20 wins and 19 losses.
However, Day One, the operator, was anxious from the start. Day One has already had a lot of noise from the acquisition negotiations with Orion, and the core was distrust of the club’s ‘financial stability’. In June, during the new member company registration review conducted by KBL, there was an incident in which membership registration was suspended due to poor data. The biggest reason was the lack of concrete grounds for the fund management plan and lack of trust in financial continuity and transparency. In the end, it was only after the payment guarantee of Daewoo Shipbuilding & Construction, the parent company of Day One Sports, that KBL approved it. 바카라
Nonetheless, before the start of the regular season, Day One raised concerns as it failed to pay 500 million won, which had to be paid first out of the KBL subscription fee of 1.5 billion won. KBL warned that Carrot could not be allowed to participate in the regular season, and Day One was able to participate in the season normally by belatedly paying the first subscription fee just before the opening. However, doubts about Day One’s operational capabilities deepened.
Currently, Day One is less than two months away from March 31, the deadline for the payment of the second subscription fee to be paid to KBL. Here, it is shocking that the wages for the Carrot team and the secretariat have already been delayed twice.
In professional basketball, examples of clubs facing crisis due to management difficulties and sales rumors include Yeosu Korea Tender (currently Suwon KT) in 2001 and Incheon Etland (currently Daegu Korea Gas Corporation) in 2012. In particular, Korea Tender was unable to pay salaries to its players for about six months due to the deteriorating financial condition of the parent company, and went through twists and turns of trading key players for cash to finance the club’s operating expenses.
However, at that time, professional basketball was still in its infancy, and there was no case of a similar situation reappearing for a while after that. Even at a time when basketball popularity was stagnant, the stable management of the club and faithful execution of contracts such as salary and welfare were a pride symbolizing the high reliability of KBL to the extent that foreign players and agents highly praised it. Although it will suffer from losses in professional basketball, which has been mainly run by leading domestic companies, most of the minimum club operations have been carried out normally. Even for a new team like Day One, the situation of a new team less than a year old has reached such a dead end that it is unprecedented.
Realistically, the chances of Day One’s revival are slim. Day One’s parent company, Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering & Construction, suffered a major deterioration in management to the extent that the court decided to initiate corporate rehabilitation procedures on the 6th. Kim Yong-bin, chairman of Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering and Construction, also withdrew from the position of chairman of the Korea Curling Federation and director of the Korea Sports Association at the beginning of last month, citing the deteriorating business environment.
The question is whether this situation could have been prevented in advance. The biggest cause of this situation is, of course, in the operators, Day One and Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering, but KBL and the basketball world cannot be free from responsibility for neglecting and worsening this situation.
A number of doubts about Day One have already been raised since the takeover of the basketball team. Day1 tried out various sports at the same time by founding a basketball team, and also promoted the establishment of a professional soccer team in Goyang. However, at the time, Goyang City resolutely judged Day 1 Sports ineligible for funding and management plans for being opaque. As a result, Goyang City’s judgment was proven correct.
On the other hand, even in the same situation, the judgment of the basketball world was different. Orion, the parent company of Goyang Orion, the predecessor of Goyang Carrot, sold the 25-year-old basketball team from Daegu without sufficient verification, leaving KBL and basketball fans with a bomb. In addition, KBL was obsessed with maintaining the ’10 club system’ even though they were already fully aware that Day1 had many problems, and made the mistake of turning a blind eye to Day1’s risks. KBL should not have allowed Day One to participate in the league even at the risk of a temporary nine-club system and league limping when Day One’s non-payment of subscription fees occurred.
In addition, based on his status as a ‘basketball icon’, Heo Jae had a significant impact on publicizing the Carrot basketball team. He gained popularity by appearing as a regular member of the team on the variety show KBS .
At official events, Heo Jae always introduced himself as Carrot’s ‘owner’. If so, he has an obligation to come up with a responsible attitude and answers to the current situation surrounding the club.
At the time of its founding, Heo Jae showed confidence in various suspicions and concerns surrounding the club, saying, “There is no problem, so don’t worry. Please evaluate it after the season.” However, after various situations surrounding the club deteriorated, he closed his mouth and kept silent.
It is questionable how well he understood the management status and internal circumstances of the club from the beginning, having only experienced basketball players and coaches all his life, and had no experience in administration or management. Rather, the situation that he was merely a ‘face madam’ for basketball team marketing by using his personal fame is revealed one after another, and he is losing his face.
In the meantime, whenever concerns about Carrot and Day One came up, KBL gave only the obvious answer, ‘We are watching and will respond in principle.’ In a situation where the popularity of professional basketball is already declining, it is not understandable that the companies that have jumped into the management of the basketball team have no choice but to notice, but as a result, this rather fueled the situation that put the league on the verge of limping.
During Day One’s one year of irresponsibility, only the players and basketball fans who silently did their best became the innocent victims. KBL and the basketball world should take responsibility for this situation and come up with active measures. In addition, in order to prevent a recurrence of a situation like Day One, the criteria for establishing a new team and the verification process should be reviewed again.