Boardroom sits down with MLB and Fanatics to learn how the Tokyo Series earlier this week, led by Shohei Ohtani, became a massive success story.
Major League Baseball has invested in the Japanese market for over 30 years.
That’s meant importing top local stars, bringing players and teams regularly for exhibition games and barnstorming tours, growing the infrastructure of Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball league, popularizing the World Baseball Classic, and playing regular season series in Tokyo on several occasions since 2000. But when Shohei Ohtani, the two-way MVP revolutionizing the game, left the Los Angeles Angels for the vastly more venerated Los Angeles Dodgers after the 2023 season, Japan’s baseball popularity skyrocketed like never before.
MLB regular season viewership in Japan shot up 42% last year, and Ohtani and Co.’s World Series win over the New York Yankees in October averaged 12.1 million viewers per game, the league said, setting a record for the country and approaching the 15.8 million average U.S. viewership. MLB apparel and jersey sales increased 183% year-over-year in Japan, while sponsorship revenue increased by 114%.
After the Dodgers opened the 2024 season in Seoul and 18.7 million watched the opening game in Japan, it only made sense that MLB decided to send Ohtani, Japanese teammates Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki, and the Dodgers to face fellow countrymen Shota Imanaga, Seiya Suzuki, and the Chicago Cubs to begin the 2025 season in Tokyo on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The results? Nothing short of spectacular for MLB, Fanatics, and the nearly 30 sponsors driving record merchandise, ticket, and sponsorship revenue and interest for the series. MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred projected $35 million in revenue for the league, while Fanatics said it sold $40 million worth of merchandise and trading cards during the Tokyo series, the best-selling special event in company history.
“It’s like this eureka moment,” Noah Garden, MLB’s Deputy Commissioner, told Boardroom from Tokyo, comparing revenue to the league’s annual All-Star week. “This has taken on a life of its own, and it’s just exploded. But success just doesn’t happen overnight. When you invest in a country internationally, you have to go to multiple times and hope that it eventually takes off.”
The Dodgers already had a long history of signing Japanese stars, including Hideo Nomo in 1995, Hiroki Kuroda in 2008, and Kenta Maeda in 2016. However, having the greatest talent in Japanese history on the country’s most popular team acted as rocket fuel for growth a year after Ohtani led Japan to the World Baseball Classic title in 2023. Its quarterfinal win over Italy drew 38 million viewers.
While Shohei won his third MVP award last season and led the Dodgers to their first championship in a non-pandemic-shortened season since 1988, a massive influx of Japanese sponsors netted the team an estimated $100 million per year. That amount would more than cover the cost of Ohtani’s heavily-deferred, 10-year, $700 million Dodger contract.
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On Tuesday, 25 million in Japan watched the Dodgers’ 4-1 win, the most-watched MLB game in the country’s history. The last Tokyo series in 2019 averaged just 6 million viewers, underscoring Ohtani’s seismic impact in the market.
On the retail side, last Friday marked Fanatics’ biggest revenue-driving day ever in Japan and East Asia, which was immediately surpassed the next day when Saturday saw a record-breaking sales day for the company across all of Asia. Baseball was everywhere in Tokyo, Garden said, from Ohtani billboards inside the airport to ads on trains and in local convenience stores like 7-Eleven.
“You knew it was going to be big,” he continued, “but until you actually got on the ground, experienced it, walked around, and saw baseball everywhere, it exceeded my expectations.”
After the Dodgers opened the 2024 season in Seoul, rumors swirled that they’d be in Tokyo next. That’s when Nori Kawana, Fanatics’ Managing Director of East Asia, began planning for Ohtani’s return to Japan. And given that Dodgers merchandise sales increased more than 2,000% year-over-year after signing Ohtani, Fanatics rented out a 31,000-square-foot retail location at Tokyo Dome, the largest ever special event MLB retail store.
With 140 registers and 700 staff ready for the throng of baseball fans expected to descend on the city, the Tokyo Dome store converted 1,100 transactions per hour on Saturday. Garden saw thousands of fans line up at 6 a.m. on Monday even though the store didn’t open until 10. Fanatics had a full presence throughout the city, opening pop-up shops at Shibuya’s Miyashita Park shopping mall and the Skytree tower, with more than 200,000 fans shopping at MLB Official stores throughout the week.
“The series was an overwhelming success for us,” Kawana told Boardroom.
Fanatics and MLB also collaborated with famed Japanese artist Takashi Murakami on a special Tokyo Series apparel collection that sold out in the first hour when it dropped on March 7 — a record for Fanatics — and specially designed flower-adorned jerseys and Topps trading cards that only amplified the games’ buzz. More than 100,000 fans downloaded the Fanatics app to secure access for the Murakami drop, shooting to the top iOS app chart in sports.
“The biggest mistake we made on those jerseys was not having them on-field,” Garden said. “We thought it was going to be big, and we put a lot of effort into it, but, again, it exceeded our expectations. The next opportunity will be the 2026 World Baseball Classic, and I think you’ll see us even take another step [with the jerseys].”
Collaborations with Murakami and Ralph Lauren off the field, in addition to the hoard of mascot Pikachus waddling around the field before Tuesday’s game, is part of a writ large strategy across baseball of infusing the game into culture, fashion, art, and music.
“These collaborations aren’t trying to make money,” Garden explained, “because you sell out, and there’s not a lot of product. But we’ve made a focused effort to increase awareness in those different facets to break through on the culture side of things.”
The culture, retail, sponsorships, and the play on the field all worked in Tokyo. Now, Garden said, MLB wants to take that winning formula worldwide. After holding multiple series in Seoul, Mexico City, and London last year, baseball will look for an even more aggressive international play plan when negotiating the next collective bargaining agreement following the 2026 season.
“We need to find places in the world that we go into where we invest heavily,” Garden said.
That starts with opening and developing academies in those countries, increasing youth participation, partnering with local professional leagues, and cultivating top players who can eventually make their mark in MLB like Japanese stars are today.
“Years ago, it was like, ‘You play a game here, you play a game there, and then you walk away,'” Garden said. “You need to make a commitment to see an outcome like you see here.”
In addition to markets MLB wants to return to, such as Japan, South Korea, London, and Mexico, Garden said India and Brazil are areas that interest the league. While games in Asia will be limited to the beginning of the season due to the long travel and time zone differences, places like Brazil and Mexico can be more flexible regarding scheduling.
After a week in Japan, where baseball achieved major wins in nearly every metric, the World Baseball Classic will return to the Tokyo Dome for pool play as MLB looks to continue the impactful momentum generated by an unforgettable week in Tokyo.
“It’s blown me away from start to finish here,” Garden said.
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