The Korean Professional Baseball League (KPBL) experienced a rapid decline in attendance after the mid-1990s. The annual attendance in 2000 was less than half what it had been 5 years before. Most consider the severe economic crisis of 1998 and competitive imbalance to have been the main reasons for this decline in attendance. The empirical evidence suggests that the emergence of Major League Baseball as a rival league to the KPBL in Korea accounted for more than half of the decline in attendance that occurred between 1995 and 2000.
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