Content featuring baseball stadium food is actively being posted on social media. Captured from YouTube
“I came here to eat, and they’re showing me baseball and playing music.”
A post on social media joking that food is the main reason to visit a baseball stadium is a surprisingly accurate depiction of Korean baseball stadium culture these days.
Stadium concessions have become such an essential part of the ballpark experience that a newly coined term, “yapu” — a blend of the Korean word for baseball, "yagu," and the English word "food" — is now widely used among fans.
Food matters as much as the game
According to an April 13 report by social data analysis service Sometrend, mentions of the keywords “watching baseball” and “attending games in person” on Naver blogs in March increased 73 percent from a year earlier.
Stadium concessions have been drawing increasing attention recently. In September last year, during the latter part of the season, blog mentions of “baseball food” or “yapu” reached an all-time high of 1,506, with some fans even saying they were “more excited about the baseball food than the baseball itself.”
This enthusiasm for food was also found in a survey of baseball stadium visitors conducted by the Korea Professional Sports Association last year. The survey, conducted with 9,321 visitors between August and September, asked which factors affected their experience of the game. Stadium concessions ranked fourth in importance, scoring 4.48 out of 5. The other top factors were clear sightlines for watching the game, access to public transportation and the overall cleanliness and comfort of the facilities.
Instagram posts show content related to “yapu,” or baseball stadium food. Captured from Instagram
Kang Hye-min, a 26-year-old college student who became a Hanwha Eagles fan last year and has been going to ballparks ever since, said the food is especially important when she visits a stadium she has never been to before.
Source: Korea Times News
