How MLB plans to develop Ohtani, Dodger fandom in Japan into billions for league
Shohei Ohtani #17 of the Los Angeles Dodgers waves to followers whereas leaving the sector after the MLB Tokyo Opening Sequence between Los Angeles Dodgers and Chicago Cubs at Tokyo Dome on March 19, 2025 in Tokyo, Japan.
Gene Wang | Getty Photos
On the morning of the second and closing recreation of Main League Baseball’s Tokyo Sequence between the Chicago Cubs and Los Angeles Dodgers on March 19, a dusting of snow fell on Japan’s capital metropolis — a particularly uncommon prevalence for a time of 12 months extra recognized for cherry blossom blooms.
However that did not dissuade greater than a thousand individuals from lining as much as store on the 31,100-square-foot Fanatics-operated MLB retailer outdoors the Tokyo Dome when it opened that morning.
That may be a reflection of the kind of impression that Shohei Ohtani is having on MLB’s enterprise in Japan, an impression that has solely grown in measurement since he signed a then-professional sports activities document 10-year, $700 million contract with the Dodgers in December 2023, following that up with MLB’s first-ever 50 house run and 50 steal season, along with successful each the Nationwide League MVP and a World Sequence title.
Final 12 months, Fanatics, which operates the MLB’s merchandise enterprise globally, noticed a 170% improve in MLB merchandise gross sales year-over-year in Japan, in line with Nori Kawana, East Asia managing director for Fanatics. Prior to now 5 years, Ohtani-related merchandise has accounted for 57% of all MLB gross sales in MLB Retailer Japan and Fanatics Japan, whereas Dodgers merchandise gross sales are up greater than 2,000% year-over-year since he signed with the group, Kawana stated.
Japan has a deep baseball historical past and is the nation’s hottest sport for each spectators and members. MLB additionally has had a protracted connection to the nation, courting again to barnstorming video games that noticed gamers like Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig play in exhibition video games in Japan to the now deeper relationship between MLB and Nippon Skilled Baseball.
Noah Backyard, MLB deputy commissioner of enterprise and media, stated Japan is by far the league’s largest business market outdoors of the U.S. and Canada, one thing he attributes to these long-term investments.
“It simply would not occur in a single day,” Backyard stated. Nonetheless, he added: “And you then’ve obtained this-once-in-a-lifetime expertise.”
Backyard stated that when MLB seems to be across the globe, “the enterprise stuff typically lags the fandom by a couple of ticks.”
In Japan, the place MLB is “simply scratching the floor,” Backyard stated, “the alternatives are exploding.”
The primary recreation of this 12 months’s Tokyo Sequence was watched by 25 million viewers in Japan, in line with MLB, setting a brand new document for the most-watched recreation within the nation — Japan’s inhabitants is roughly 125 million. The second recreation averaged greater than 23 million viewers.
Whereas it is not a precise apples-to-apples comparability, the Dodgers-New York Yankees 2024 World Sequence averaged 15.8 million viewers within the U.S. (and 12.1 million in Japan the place the video games started within the morning).
MLB plans to feed that rising fanbase in Japan with content material. The league has lengthy had an workplace within the nation, and lately expanded its authentic and translated Japanese content material for the MLB app and on MLB.com. It is usually including a e-newsletter and a content material hub that follows Japanese-born gamers. in addition to updating its MLB Gameday product, which offers recreation monitoring and superior stats, to be in Japanese.
Followers pose for pictures forward of the baseball recreation between Los Angeles Dodgers and Chicago Cubs within the MLB Tokyo Sequence outdoors of the Tokyo Dome in Tokyo on March 18, 2025.
Yuichi Yamazaki | Afp | Getty Photos
Backyard stated {that a} rising viewers is altering the best way the league is considering its subsequent media rights contract, with each its worldwide and home offers expiring after the 2028 season. “When the following set of offers are up, you are going to discover individuals which might be in search of worldwide rights, particularly the streamers,” Backyard stated. “The quantity of individuals partaking with and watching the sport internationally I feel has opened everybody’s eyes.”
For the Tokyo Sequence, video games had been broadcast regionally on over-the-air NTV, in addition to streamed on Amazon Prime.
That additionally carries over to sponsorships, Backyard stated, with American corporations seeing a possibility to additional break into the Japanese market whereas Japanese corporations are capable of not solely do issues with MLB now regionally however attain U.S. shoppers as nicely. Within the final two years, MLB has signed 14 new sponsors in Japan, and the Tokyo Sequence was the league’s largest worldwide sponsorship occasion ever, producing a 240% improve in income in comparison with the 2024 Seoul Sequence performed in Seoul, South Korea.
“We’re benefitting from all that type of converging on the identical time,” Backyard stated.
Backyard stated the league expects the Tokyo Sequence to be “probably the most profitable worldwide recreation we have performed financially.”
The 2 video games between the Cubs and Dodgers had been on the spot sell-outs, along with the exhibition video games held between the MLB groups and native Japanese video games. Demand was so excessive, the video games had been aired in roughly 150 film theaters in Japan.
The Tokyo Sequence recorded one of the best merchandise gross sales of any MLB worldwide occasion, with gross sales eclipsing the 2024 London Sequence by 320%, MLB stated. Gross sales on the retailer on the Tokyo Dome surpassed each MLB All-Star Week ever, promoting greater than half 1,000,000 merchandise. Unsurprisingly, the preferred merchandise was an Ohtani jersey with the Tokyo Sequence patch.
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred advised the New York Instances that he expects the Tokyo Sequence to set information throughout the board for a league particular occasion, and will usher in upwards of $35 million. Nonetheless, he stated the bigger purpose is to develop the league’s whole enterprise there: “We do imagine there are payoffs within the B’s: billions,” Manfred advised the Instances.
Connecting Japanese followers with all MLB gamers, groups
Justin Turner #3 of the Chicago Cubs poses with younger followers who put on pretend beard previous to the sport towards Yomiuri Giants at Tokyo Dome on March 16, 2025 in Tokyo, Japan.
Kenta Harada | Getty Photos Sport | Getty Photos
That progress will solely proceed as Ohtani, alongside different Japanese-born gamers just like the Dodgers’ Roki Sasaki and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and the Cubs’ Shota Imanaga and Seiya Suzuki, proceed to make an impression in MLB. However the problem for MLB and its companions in reaching that lofty purpose is to construct up the remainder of the league’s gamers in Japan as nicely.
David Leiner, president of buying and selling playing cards for Fanatics Collectibles, the place he oversees Topps, stated that the fandom round baseball in Japan is plain, with loads of assist not just for the Japanese MLB stars however the native NPB groups as nicely.
Topps has grown its enterprise into the eight figures within the nation, Leiner stated, “with Ohtani sprinkling somewhat accelerant into the expansion.”
The corporate additionally holds the licenses for the Japanese baseball and soccer leagues, in addition to different leisure properties, and Leiner stated Fanatics sees the potential for the market to generate upwards of 9 figures.
Japanese baseball card collectors aren’t very totally different from American ones, Leiner stated, however one of many vital variations is how a lot they give the impression of being to assist gamers from their nation. “Do they need the Derek Jeter [card] or Mike Trout [card]? In fact, however they lean somewhat extra in direction of the Japanese gamers in MLB, and there is lots of delight in that,” he stated.
Leiner stated that does result in the fandom of groups that Japanese gamers performed on, and that does stick over time — for instance, there’s a contingent of Seattle Mariners followers in Japan attributable to Ichiro Suzuki’s time with the group. However there are different examples of it being a fleeting phenomenon, as Japanese followers flocked to 1 participant after which stopped following as intently when that participant left MLB. Now, the expansion of Japanese gamers, and their impression inside the league, helps to construct a broader fandom for MLB.
Final season, there have been 10 Japanese-born gamers on MLB rosters on Opening Day, probably the most since 2013 when there have been 11. Whereas that considerably trails a few of the different nations represented within the league, just like the Dominican Republic and Venezuela — which had 108 and 58 gamers on Opening Day rosters, respectively — few nations can match the star energy of the present group of Japanese gamers. MLB has not but required groups to finalize 2025 Opening Day rosters, however the variety of Japanese gamers is anticipated to develop.
Kawana, who relies in Tokyo, stated that whereas Japanese followers have traditionally been player-fandom centered, he’s now seeing a progress in group fandom particularly because it has grow to be simpler to comply with these groups.
Having MLB groups on the bottom hasn’t harm both. Earlier than this 12 months, the final time MLB performed official video games in Japan was in 2019, and Backyard stated that the league is hoping that when it agrees to its new CBA, set to run out in 2026, it can include “a fair larger [international] plan.”
MLB will host a slate of video games in Monterrey, Mexico, later this month.
“These kinds of issues are years within the making, and it takes a very long time from participation on the youth degree on as much as actually mature,” Backyard stated. “You are seeing the fruits of it now, and this could usher in a brand new period of prosperity for MLB and baseball in Asia.”
