Being perhaps the most well-liked athlete in the world, Shohei Ohtani's superstar status has greatly accelerated MLB's business in Japan.
Baseball is the most popular sport in Japan, where MLB has long made investments and generated a number of MLB players, making it the league's largest market outside of the United States and
Canada. However, MLB sees a chance to elevate it to a new level since none of those players have gone beyond the game as Ohtani has.
In a season more commonly associated with cherry blossom blossoms, a sprinkling of snow fell over Japan's capital city on the morning of the Chicago Cubs vs. Los Angeles Dodgers game, the second and final game of Major League Baseball's Tokyo Series, on March 19.
Even so, when the 31,100-square-foot MLB store run by Fanatics opened outside the Tokyo Dome that morning, over a thousand fans lined
up to shop.
That reflects the kind of influence Shohei Ohtani is having on MLB's business in Japan, an influence that has only gotten bigger since he signed a 10-year, $700 million contract with the Dodgers in December 2023, setting a record for professional sports at the time. He then went on to have MLB's first-ever season with 50 home runs and 50 steals, winning the National League MVP award and a World Series championship.
According to Nori Kawana, East Asia managing director for Fanatics, which runs the MLB's merchandise business worldwide, MLB merchandise sales in Japan increased by 170% year over year last year. Ohtani-related clothing has made up 57% of all MLB sales in MLB Store Japan and Fanatics Japan over the last five years, while Dodgers merchandise sales have increased by more than 2,000% year since he joined the team, according to Kawana.
Baseball has a long history in Japan and is the most popular sport there, both among spectators and players. From barnstorming games in which Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig played in exhibition games in Japan to the current closer ties between MLB and Nippon Professional Baseball, MLB has a lengthy history in the nation.
According to MLB Deputy Commissioner of Business and Media Noah Garden, those long-term expenditures are the reason Japan is by far the league's largest commercial market outside of the
United States and Canada.
Garden remarked, "It just doesn't happen overnight." "And then you've got this once-in-a-lifetime talent," he continued.
According to Garden, "the business stuff generally lags the fandom by a few ticks" when MLB looks at the world.
"The opportunities are exploding" in Japan, where MLB is "just scratching the surface," according to Garden.
With a population of about 125 million, MLB reports that 25 million people watched the opening game of this year's Tokyo Series in Japan, breaking the previous record for the most-watched game in the nation. Over 23 million people watched the second game on average.
The Dodgers-New York Yankees 2024 World Series drew an average of 15.8 million viewers in the United States (and 12.1 million in Japan, where the games started in the morning), while it's not a perfect comparable.
MLB intends to provide content to Japan's expanding fan base. The MLB app and MLB.com now feature more original and translated Japanese material, and the league maintains a long-standing presence in the nation. Additionally, a content portal that tracks players who were born in Japan and a newsletter are being added. as well as making its MLB Gameday tool, which offers advanced metrics and game tracking, available in Japanese.