What We Can See from the MLB's Opening Games in Japan

Photo From: Nikkei.com

Prior to the regular season of the Major League Baseball (MLB) starts in the United States tonight, the opening games of the Oakland Athletics and the Seattle Mariners were taken place in Japan on March 28^th and 29^th (in Japan Time).  A lot of Japanese baseball fans enjoyed watching the playing of Ichiro Suzuki, the most popular Japanese MLB player.

This event was not the charity event, but it had a lot of meanings for Japan. The MLB payers visited Ishinomaki, a stricken area of the earthquake and the Tsunami last year, in order to have a baseball clinic to local children. Also, the MLB donated $500,000 to Ishinomaki for rebuilding the baseball park there. The victims of the disaster want to rebuild the baseball park instead of building temporary houses because they need a place to communicate each other.

     

Video from: MLB.com

On the business side, this event made a huge success for the MLB. They sold out the tickets of these games. Many tickets were sold for more than $200, and extra seats were built. It showed that the MLB already has a big market in Japan. Since Hideo Nomo’s debut with the Los Angels Dodgers in 1995, more Japanese baseball players have played in the MLB or some minor leagues’ teams. In this season 15 Japanese baseball players play on the MLB.

Along with the increasing the number of Japanese MLB players, more Japanese people became to watch the MLB games, and now you can see billboards that are written in Japanese in some ballparks in the United States.

Currently, all of 4 major sports leagues in the United States, MLB, NBA, NFL, and NHL, have a lot of foreign players. Therefore, expanding markets globally would make great sense to raise their revenue streams.

NBA

• The NBA was the first league of the 4 major sports league that exported their games abroad. In 1990, their games were played in Japan.
• As discussed on the previous post, the NBA focuses on the Chinese market now, and they hosted the NBA’s China tour in 2007.
• The NBA is the most global league among the 4 major sports in the United States.

MLB

• In 2000, they operated their first games in abroad in Japan. Since then, the MLB have played in Japan in every 4 year.
• Players are from 44 different countries.

NHL

• More than 20% of viewers of NHL.com come from outside of the Northern American countries.
• Recently, they made TV deals abroad for 5 years with $50 million in Europe.

NFL

• They owned a league in Europe, the NFL Europe, until 2006.
• The NFL will host at least one game per year in London until 2016.

As the success of the MLB in Japan, other leagues also have their own strategies to expand their market globally. However, I want them to educate the sports leagues in different countries as well as raising their international revenue. If they only expand their leagues in different countries, the number of people who watch the domestic sports leagues will decrease because American sports leagues are more attractive than the local leagues in most of cases. Therefore, I hope them to share the business models to grow their market together in different countries in order to develop the whole sports league industry.