Will there be a warm breeze in the upcoming FA market? The Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) has raised the upper limit of salary cap.안전놀이터
KBO held its third board meeting in 2024 on July 31st and confirmed the revision of the salary cap system and the increase in salary when low-salary players register for KBO League entries.
▲ Adjustment of salary cap upper limit and name change
For the league’s upward standardization and continuous development, the salary cap system, which was decided to be introduced in 2020, has been steadily raised that the system needs to be supplemented to suit the reality in consideration of the recent price hike and the size of player contracts.
To this end, the board of directors decided to raise the upper limit in 2025 from the current KRW 11.426.38 billion to KRW 13.71 billion, a 20% increase. In addition, in accordance with the purpose of the system, the name will be changed from ‘Salary Cap’ to ‘Competitive Equal Tax’ and ‘Sanctions Fund’ to ‘Baseball Development Fund’.
▲ Increase in moving expenses in case of transfer of player contract
They also deliberated on moving expenses paid to players when transferring player contracts (trade).
The current moving expenses are paid 1 million won (both clubs pay 500,000 won each) to players traded under Article 92 of the KBO Regulations. Reflecting the growth of the league and the inflation rate realistically, the total amount was increased by 1 million won to 2 million won (both clubs pay 1 million won each).
▲ Increase in annual salary when registering for KBO League entry
In order to increase the size of the league and motivate players, such as increasing the average salary of players, the annual salary standard, which will be paid separately from the annual salary when low-salary players register for KBO League entry, will be raised.
Article 73 of the current KBO Code [increase and reduction of annual salary] requires that a player with an annual salary of less than 50 million won is registered in the KBO League entry, multiplied by one-hundredth of the player’s annual salary by the number of registration days, separately from the annual salary of 50 million won, but the board of directors raised the payment standard annual salary by 30% to 65 million won.
▲ Ensuring the number of days of battery training by adjusting the start and end dates of inactivity periods
Ahead of the opening of every season, the timing of off-season training to improve players’ skills and condition has been changed earlier than before in line with the recent trend.
In order to ensure the period of players’ inactivity, the team’s joint off-season training has been adjusted from January 15 to February 1 since 2017. However, considering the gap in training environment between players before joining the team’s joint training, and the recent opening date of the season is being advanced to March, opinions have been raised that it is necessary to ensure sufficient training days in time for the opening day.
Therefore, the current inactivity period, which is from December 1 to January 31 every year, will be moved up by one week, and will be changed from November 24 to January 24 every year. As a result, each club will be able to start off-season training from January 25 every year, increasing the number of days by about a week. However, according to the decision of each club, the start and end dates can be adjusted within seven days.