An official from the federation told the Daily on the 12th, “There have been discussions about the revision of the player contract management regulations for a few years, and we have held meetings since last year to discuss the revision in detail.”
According to the current regulations, the contract period is fixed at five years for college graduates and seven years for high school graduates, and the contract amount cannot exceed 150 million won and 100 million won, respectively. The annual salary for college graduates is 60 million won and 50 million won for high school graduates in the first year of joining the team. The annual salary cannot exceed 7 percent until the third year.
However, various allowances, including prize money, are separate from annual salaries. Revenue from external advertisements is processed according to each team’s internal regulations.
In a recent interview, Ahn Se-young demanded fair economic compensation from the Badminton Korea Association, including sponsorship and contracts, and pointed out the issue of down payments and annual salary caps received by unemployed badminton players.
The federation is currently holding talks on three proposals: maintaining the current contract period, easing the annual salary limit and abolishing it. “It is highly likely that it will be eased or abolished,” a source at the federation said. “However, nothing has been decided as an extraordinary board meeting has not been held yet. It is a process to draw general opinions. The federation’s goal is to revise this year and implement it next year.”
An official said, “Badminton is an unpopular sport, so we have made such a rule to protect the market and the sport. No player has achieved this level of performance even though it has been less than three years since Ahn joined the team. There have been no cases, but the newly elected chairman (Jeon Kyung-hoon, CEO of Passion Korea) last year has a strong will to change and is pushing for a revision.”
The federation is expected to hold a brief meeting on this at a gathering of executives and officials from the 13th. If there is any concrete progress, an extraordinary board date will be set.
BY: 메이저놀이터