Shohei Okhtani #17 from Los Angeles Dodgers Masha fans as she leaves the field after opening the MLB Tokyo series between Los Angeles Dodgers and Chicago Cubs in Tokyo Dome on March 19, 2025. In Tokyo in Japan.
Gene Wang | Getty Images
In the morning of the second and last matches of Tokyo Major League Baseball series between Chicago Cubs and Los Angeles Dodgers on March 19th, snow dust fell on the capital of Japan – which is an extremely rare occurrence during the year known for cherry flowers.
But this did not turn away more than a thousand people from lining to purchase at the MLB store with fanatics of 31,100 square meters outside the Tokyo dome when it opened that morning.
It is a reflection of the kind of influence that Shohei Okanani deals with MLB’s business in Japan, an influence that has grown only since he signed a professional sports record of 10-year-old, $ 700 million contracts with Dodgers in December 2023, after that, after that, for the first time in the MLB, and the 50-year series, with the addition of, with the addition of the League with the addition of Home-in 19 years.
Last year, the Fanatics, which manages MLB’s Global Committee, recorded a 170% increase in the sale of MLB goods compared to the year in Japan, said Nori Kawan, director of fanatics in East Asia. In the last five years, the Ohhhtana goods have made up 57% of all MLB sales at the MLB Store Japan and Fanatics Japan, while the sale of Dodgers goods is greater than 2000% compared to that, Kawana said.
Japan has a deep history of baseball and is the most popular sport in the country and for spectators and for participants. The MLB also had a long relationship with the earth, dating from Barnstorminging games where players like Baba Ruth and Lou Gehrig played at the exhibition games in Japan with the now deeper embroidery between the MLB Nippon Professional Baseball.
Noah Garden, Deputy Commissioner for Business and Media MLB, said Japan is by far the largest commercial market of the league outside the US and Canada, something that he attributes to that long-term investment.
“That just doesn’t happen overnight,” Garden said. However, he added, “And then you got this talent in your life.”
Garden said that when MLB looks around the world, “business things are mostly lagging behind a few ticks.”
In Japan, where MLB is “just scratching the surface,” Garden said, “Options explode.”
The first game of this year’s Tokyo series was watched by 25 million spectators in Japan, according to MLB, setting a new record for the most watched game in the country-Japanese population is approximately 125 million. The second game was more than 23 million spectators on average.
Although it is not accurate comparison of apples to apples, Dodgers-New York Yankees 2024 World Series is average in the US (and 12.1 million in Japan, where games started in the morning).
MLB plans to feed that growing database in Japan with content. The league has long had an office in the country, and recently expanded its original and translated Japanese content for the MLB app and at MLB.com. He also adds the newsletter and the center of content that follows players born in Japanese. As well as updating your MLB GameDay product, which provides the monitoring of games and advanced statistics, in Japanese.
Fans are posing for photos on the eve of the baseball game between Los Angeles Dodgers and Chicago Cubs, MLB Tokyo series outside the Tokyo dome in Tokyo on March 18, 2025.
Yuichi yamazaki | AFP | Getty Images
Garden said that the growing audience changes the way the league considers its next media rights contract, and its international and domestic contracts expire after the 2028 season. “When the next set of contracts increase, you will find people seeking world rights, especially a current,” Garden said. “The amount of people dealing with and watches an international game, I think she opened everyone’s eyes.”
For Tokyo series, the games have been broadcast locally on NTV across the air, as well as flowing on Amazon Prime.
This is also transmitted to sponsorships, Garden said, and US companies have seen the opportunity to further break into the Japanese market, while Japanese companies can not only work with MLB now locally, but also reach US consumers. In the last two years, the MLB has signed 14 new sponsors in Japan, and Tokyo series has been the largest international sponsorship event of the League ever, achieving revenue of 240% compared to the 2024 series in Seoul playing in Seoul in South Korea.
“We benefit from all such converge at the same time,” Garden said.
Garden said the league expects the Tokyo series to be “the most successful international game we made financially”.
Two matches between Cubs and Dodgers were current sales, with exhibition games held between MLB teams and local Japanese games. The demand was so high, the games were aired in approximately 150 cinemas in Japan.
The Tokyo series recorded the best sale of goods of any MLB International event, and sales have eclipsed the London 2024 series with 320%, MLB said. Sales at the Tokyo Dome store has surpassed each MLB All-Star Week ever, selling more than half a million products. Not surprisingly, the most popular item was a jersey with a Tokyo series.
Commissioner MLB -A Rob Manfred said the New York Times The Tokyo series expected to set records throughout the league event, and could bring more than $ 35 million. However, he said that the bigger goal was to grow the overall job of the league there: “We believe that there are payments in B -billions,” Manfred told The Times.
Connecting Japanese fans with all MLB players, teams
Justin Turner #3 from Chicago Cubs poses with young fans who carry a fake beard against Yomiuri Giants before the game at Tokyo Dome on March 16, 2025. In Tokyo, Japan.
Kenta Harada | Getty Images Sport | Getty Images
This growth will only continue because Ohhhtana, along with other players born in Japan like Dodgers’s Roki Sasaki and Yoshinobu Yamamota, and Cubs’ Shota Imanaga and Seiya Suzuki, still affect MLB. But the challenge for MLB and his partners in achieving this sublime goal is to build other league players in Japan.
David Leiner, president of the Fanatics Collectibles trade tickets, where he monitors Topps, said that Fando around the baseball in Japan was indisputable, with a lot of support not only for Japanese MLB stars, but also local NPB teams.
Topps has grown into eight figures in the country, Leiner said, “while Okhtani sprinkled some acceleration into growth.”
The company also owns licenses for Japanese baseball and football leagues, as well as other fun properties, and Leiner said Fanatics see the potential for the market to generate more than nine figures.
Japanese baseball card collectors are no different from American, Leiner said, but one of the significant differences is how much they look like to support players from their country. “Do they want a dereka jether [card] or Mike Trout [card]?? Of course, but they lean a little more Japanese players in MLB, and that’s a lot of pride, “he said.
Leiner said this leads to Fandom teams played by Japanese players, which over time is held – for example, there is a contingent of Seattle Mariners fans in Japan because of Ichir Suzuki’s time with a team. But there are other examples that it is a fast phenomenon, while Japanese fans poured on one player, and then they stopped following so closer when that player left the MLB. Now, the growth of Japanese players and their influence in the league help build a wider fannda for MLB.
Last season on the opening day there were 10 players born in Japanese, which has been mostly since 2013, when there were 11. While this is significantly followed by some other countries represented in the league, such as the Dominican Republic and Venezuele-Koji had 108 and 58 players on the opening list of countries can match the star of the current group of Japanese players. The MLB has not yet demanded the teams to complete the 2025 opening list, but the number of Japanese players is expected to grow.
Kawana, based in Tokyo, said that although Japanese fans are historically focused on the players focused, he now records growth in the team, especially since it has become easier to follow these teams.
Having teams of MLB on the ground did not harm. Before this year, the last time MLB played official games in Japan in 2019, and Garden said the league hoped that when he agreed to his new CBA, he would expel in 2026, to come with “even bigger [international] plan.”
The MLB will host the Games in Monterrey, Mexico later this month.
“Things like this have been made in the production, and it takes a long time from participating at the youth level to really mature,” Garden said. “Now you see the highlight, and that should be brought to the new era of prosperity for MLB and baseball in Asia.”
