Sports Briefs

OLYMPICS

Korean banks to donate $17.7 million to Olympics

Korean banks will donate 20 billion won ($17.7 million) to the organizing committee of the PyeongChang Winter Olympics to help the nation successfully host the quadrennial sports extravaganza, the Korea Federation of Banks said Tuesday.

Besides the donation, banks will buy 1 billion won worth of tickets for the games, according to the federation.

KEB Hana Bank, an official supporter of the games, also signed a sponsorship deal worth 11.1 billion won. The donation is in line with banks’ financial doctrine of social responsibility, the federation said.

PyeongChang 2018, the first Winter Olympics to be held in Korea, will run Feb. 9 to 25 next year.

BASEBALL

Lee Seung-youp’s final game has completely sold out

The final game for retiring Korean baseball legend Lee Seung-yuop has sold out, his club Samsung Lions said Tuesday.

The Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) club said the 24,000 tickets to the regular season finale on Oct. 3 between the Lions and the Nexen Heroes at Daegu Samsung Lions Park in Daegu, 300 kilometers (186 miles) southeast of Seoul, have all been snapped up. The game will begin at 5 p.m.

The first 15,000 tickets went on sale for the club’s Blue Members on Sunday, and they were gone by Monday. Then the remaining 9,000 tickets were made available for all other fans at 11 a.m. Tuesday, and they were all sold within five minutes. Lee, 41, is leaving the KBO after 15 seasons here. He also played eight seasons in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball from 2004 to 2011.

Yonhap