“We focused on what the fans wanted from the All-Star Festival.”
The Shinhan Bank SOL 2022-23 Women’s Professional Basketball All-Star Festival held at Incheon Dowon Gymnasium on the 8th was very special and the last one was also successful. Above all, it was meaningful that it presented something different from before with a new attempt.
The most special thing at this WKBL All-Star Festival was the challenge system. WKBL introduced the Fan Challenge and Transit Challenge, making this All-Star Festival even brighter after three years.
Shin Ji-hyun, the representative of Pink Star, suddenly requested a challenge with 3 minutes left in the 2nd quarter. Among the two challenges, the one chosen was the fan challenge. He pointed to one of the fans in the stands and called him onto the court to score.
The Pink Star players greeted him by dancing until the fan scored. Even after scoring, they danced together and made the audience laugh.
In the third quarter, Lee So-hee, representative of Blue Star, applied for the challenge. As a transfer challenge, it was to trade one of the players from Pink Star and one from Blue Star. Lee So-hee chose Kang I-seul, who was active, and sent Jin-an through a random lottery. 토토
It was a special event in which the players changed their uniforms during the game and competed against each other. In particular, it added to the fun as it was the trade between Kang Iseul and Jinan, who showed the hottest scoring sense in Pink Star and Blue Star.
New attempts, and who did the idea come from? An official from WKBL, whom we met after the All-Star Festival, said, “In the meantime, we have prepared events with fans for every All-Star game. This time, it was the first all-star festival in three years, and we listened to what the fans wanted to arrange a more special event. We gathered ideas about what kind of event we wanted, and the ones that were selected were the Fan Challenge and the Transit Challenge.”
In the case of the transfer challenge, since the players change during the game, we had to pay attention to record management. It was also important what criteria to set. Before and after the game, there were a lot of criteria that had to be set, such as which team the players who changed teams should ultimately belong to.
A WKBL official said, “Isn’t it unusual for players to change uniforms during a game (laughs). Since this is my first time doing it, I thought about how to manage records. The Ministry of Economy and Finance resolved it well, and we tried to avoid confusion.”
Then, are the fan challenge and transfer challenge a one-time event? Or could it be a special event that can be seen at the WKBL All-Star Festival in the future?
A WKBL official said, “Like this time, the WKBL All-Star Festival will listen to what the fans want. Fan Challenge, Transit Challenge, of course, if there are better events, we will fully consider them. Now that the All-Star Festival is over, it’s hard to be sure, but I’ll prepare well.”