[Namsan Stroll] The New Joy of Familiarity: Content Strategy Lessons from Pro Baseball

Fall baseball is in full swing. A distinctive fan culture has become a hallmark of Korean professional baseball: fans watch teams battle for wins and losses amid predictions and plot twists, enjoy delicious food, and cheer on players and teams with songs and dance moves. Rookies bring fresh energy, and changes such as the automated ball-strike system (ABS) have been introduced, but the rules of a nine-inning game remain fixed. So do the cheering songs. Even so, fans look forward to the next game. Perhaps it is because they get to experience their favorite teams and players anew with every game. Fans have new experiences depending on the opposing team, the players’ strong and poor performances, and the game’s result. A loss in the previous game makes today’s win all the more thrilling; the performance of “my player,” whom they have followed for a long time, moves them in a special way; and, as they sing cheering songs together, they build their own stories and memories.

The mechanics of sports, which create new enjoyment through familiar plays and recurring seasons, also offer lessons for the content industry. The key is continuity. Creating new content is important, but so is enabling people to experience familiar content in new ways. The same characters and fictional worlds can take on new meaning when paired with different content. The challenge is to find ways for people to enjoy compelling content again and again.

The essential prerequisite is fans’ “attachment.” Baseball fans do more than watch games: they sing cheering songs, buy merchandise, interpret game scenes, and create memes. Fans of other content, too, immerse themselves in and experience new facets of “the content I love,” adding their own interpretations and connecting with others. The vitality of content IP expands through these relationships with fandoms.

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These relationships provide a foundation for content to connect with other industries and generate tangible revenue. Content IP can grow and diversify through collaboration with other industries. For example, content can give people a reason to visit a venue, while the venue can serve as a place to experience the content and connect with others. Recently, Mitsui Fudosan, which has Tokyo Dome among its subsidiaries, announced plans to launch an idol development business with a content company, establish a dedicated theater at a commercial facility, and link the venue with content. The company’s strategy of creating a place people will keep coming back to is also useful for the content industry. In a space where it can meet its fandom, content IP can expand into a range of formats, including new storytelling experiences and merchandise.

The “Content IP League,” a keyword the Korea Creative Content Agency put forward last year in its outlook for the content industry, captures the industry’s mechanism for creating new experiences. Much like a sports league, various content IPs and companies should connect fan experiences through competition and collaboration, turning the success of individual content into sustained industry growth.

To achieve this, a structure is needed in which one IP connects to other content and industries, creating new opportunities. The key is to build relationships in which diverse businesses participate, grow together, and share the results. In a sports league, teams compete to win, but they also attract fans and generate revenue through strategic trades and shared events such as the All-Star Game, growing together in the process. Growing content IP likewise requires a structure that brings diverse stakeholders together to expand opportunities for joint planning and commercialization and share the gains from collaboration. In this context, discussions and initiatives around a “Korean-style production committee,” which seeks to expand and monetize IP by connecting stakeholders across production, investment, platforms, distribution, and manufacturing, carry significant meaning.

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Fans cheer for familiar teams while looking forward to a new season. The power to create new enjoyment through familiarity is the growth strategy the content industry can learn from professional baseball.

Song Jin, Head of the Policy Research Division at the Korea Creative Content Agency

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.