Enter the Skygunners: Goyang rejoins KBL under new owner

Basketball

Published: 21 Jul. 2023, 13:30 Updated: 22 Jul. 2023, 01:53

Enter the Skygunners: Goyang rejoins KBL under new owner

From left: Sono International General Manager Lee Ki-wan, Sono Skygunners head coach Kim Seung-ki and captain Kim Kang-sun reveal the team's rebranding under new owner Sono and plans to prepare for the 2023-24 KBL season after being readmitted to the league at the KBL Center in southern Seoul on Friday. [NEWS1]

The Korean Basketball League on Friday approved hotel company Sono International’s purchase of the Goyang-based Jumpers basketball franchise, readmitting the recently ousted team into the KBL for the upcoming 2023-24 season.

Sono International announced the same day that the club, which played the majority of the 2022-23 season as the Goyang Carrot Jumpers, will now be known as the Sono Skygunners. The team will continue to play out of Goyang, Gyeonggi, where it has been based since 2011.

The Goyang club became the first-ever team to be expelled from the KBL in the league's 26-year history after failing to pay their players overdue salary and resolve financial problems.

With the decision to readmit the Skygunners into the KBL, the league will continue to compete with 10 teams from the start of the new season on Oct. 21.

The Skygunners is the latest in a long line of rebrands for the Goyang basketball club, although only a few of those name changes came with a change of ownership.

The club was founded as the Dongyang Confectionary Basketball Team in 1996. The club was rebranded as the Daegu Tongyang Orions a year later, named after the company’s growing Orion brand.

The club continued to play as the Tongyang Orions until 2003, by which point Orion had been spun off from the main Tongyang brand. The club was renamed the Daegu Orions until 2011, when they moved north to Goyang and became the Goyang Orions.

In 2015, Orion decided to double down on the name, creating one of the most famous and confusing team names in Korean sports — the Goyang Orion Orions.

The double Orion name stayed until 2022, when the club was sold for the first time to Day One Asset Management, at the time a subsidiary of Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering. Day One rebranded the team as the Jumpers and sold the naming rights to Carrot Insurance, creating the Goyang Carrot Jumpers.

Financial trouble at DSME impacted Day One part way through last season, and the asset management company eventually cut ties with Carrot Insurance — presumably looking for a larger sponsor and an influx of cash.

That move failed and the club — by then the Goyang Day One Jumpers — quickly run out of money, failing to pay its players for several months and eventually being kicked out the league.

The arrival of Sono International should put an end to those financial problems.

“We will pay the KBL membership fee as a lump sum and show you the receipt,” Sono General Manager Lee Ki-wan said in a press conference on Friday. “Everyone from the coaching staff to the players and even the bus driver have now been employed again. We will spend August and September training at the [Sono-owned] Vivaldi Park.

“Based on a five-year plan agreed with Goyang City, we will create a structure in which the city, team and Sono can develop together.”

BY JIM BULLEY [jim.bulley@joongang.co.kr]