For the first time since the K League of Professional Soccer began officially counting only paid spectators, the league’s first two divisions have combined to reach “3 million spectators” in a season.

According to the Korea Professional Football Association, a total of 46,789 paid spectators were recorded for the final three matches of the 38th round of the 2023 K League 1 regular season on Wednesday.

There were 28,638 fans at Munsoo Football Stadium in Ulsan, where champions Ulsan Hyundai played Jeonbuk Hyundai in the “Hyundai Derby,” and 12,334 fans at DGB Daegu Bank Park, which recorded its 11th sellout of the season, to watch Daegu FC play Incheon United.

5,817 fans attended the Gwangju Football Stadium, where Gwangju FC, the team behind the “promotion surge,” clinched the club’s first-ever Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Champions League (ACL) qualification against the Pohang Steelers.

Including these three matches, the total attendance for this season’s K League 1 was 2,447,147, K League 2 was 564,362, and the total for both leagues was 3,011,509.

This marks the first time since 2018, when the league began collecting paid attendance, that the total number of fans in a season exceeded 3 million.

The K League, which celebrated its 40th anniversary this year, kicked off the season with the opening round of the first division, setting a record for the largest opening round attendance (101,632) in the relegation era (2013-).

After 176 games, the total attendance reached 1,837,901, surpassing the 1,827,061 for the entire 2019 season and breaking the record for the largest single-season attendance in the history of the league based on paid attendance.

This season, the average attendance per K League 1 game was 10,733, the first time the average has reached 10,000 since paid attendance began. Previously, it had been 12 years since the 2011 season (11,634).

K League 2 also set a new single-season record for paid attendance, surpassing the 2019 season’s record of 536,217. 스포츠토토사이트