A somewhat unknown and mysterious company called Centennial Investment has stepped up to the plate and purchased the Hyundai Unicorns, enabling the Korean Baseball Organization to maintain its current eight-team league.
Centennial is based in Seattle (though I presume is Korean owned) and trades in energy, the medical industry and consulting services. The strange part is that the company was started in June of 2007 and was capitalized at just 2 million won (just over $2,000). However, the team it purchased yesterday cost $12.7MM. Hmmm.
At any rate, game on and all that. Unfortunately the team will not carry the Centennial name, which as far as corporate team names go, sounds kind of cool. Instead the naming rights will be sold to a Centennial client. In order to raise more funds Centennial will also sell ad space on the player uniforms, caps and equipment to other clients (see photo above). Fun. A team running around looking like nine race car drivers. Maybe they’ll change hats every inning. Up until now KBO teams have only worn the logo of their sponsor.
If this team starts out hot I say its owned by the Yakuza and the fix is in.
The team will play at Mokdong Stadium in Western Seoul. Mokdong, which has an artificial turf playing surface, was built in 1989.
Also, I looked for Centennial Investment online and found nothing. Granted, there are a number of companies with similar names.
Funny enough, last I checked the Joongang Daily was mistakenly running a photo of a naked child being locked out of his school (much on that story here), instead of the photo meant for the Centennial team purchase story, captioned “Orphaned Hyundai Unicorns players” training at Wondang Stadium.
5 responses so far ↓
1 Simon Currie // Jan 31, 2008 at 5:41 pm
Maybe the editor has a sense of humour (^^;
Anyways, interesting developments. Good to hear that KBO managed to not contract, mysterious buyer is better than no buyer. And I assume KBO is past the stage of infant leagues who have teams folding midseason.
Also interesting to see the Mitsubishi logo on the (sample?) uniform picture. Does Mitsubishi have a big presence in Korea? I thought chaebols ruled the roost.
2 Shinsano // Jan 31, 2008 at 8:22 pm
No, I think they just picked it as an example of a uniform with sponsors on it. I can’t imagine the league allowing anything but Korean sponsors on the uniform.
I’m wondering about this Centennial though. Is it a Korean investment company only dealing with Korean entities? Doubt it.
3 westbaystars // Jan 31, 2008 at 9:42 pm
When I first read about this yesterday (January 30, JST), I thought it was the group that bought Daiei’s dept and is now reaping most of SoftBank’s profits by the high prices they charge for Fukuoka Dome (double dipping charging the team and SoftBank’s child company Yahoo! Japan for naming rights). But that was the Colonial Capital investment firm.
4 Simon Currie // Jan 31, 2008 at 11:21 pm
Interesting sample to choose what with the love-hate thing Korea has for Japan depending on the age group and subject matter. Then again, America is in a similar position, so that would leave sample unis with Philips, BMW, etc. if they don’t want to tip the cap towards any real Korean sponsors coming on board.
5 salva // Feb 1, 2008 at 4:08 am
Here, in Colombia, all space available is used for sponsors
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