TOKYO — During the early innings of a nighttime exhibition between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Yomiuri Giants, Nori Kawana walked through the concourse of the Tokyo Dome in disbelief. As the head of Fanatics’ East Asia operation, Kawana leads MLB’s merchandising in Japan, and the day had already set his company’s sales record in Asia. He was willing to bet no other sports retailer had ever had a better day in the region, either.
Seemingly every other fan at the Dome wore national hero Shohei Ohtani’s No. 17 jersey. Some 20 minutes after Kawana stopped to talk to a reporter, Ohtani ripped a home run to right field, and the frenzy continued. Just outside the Dome, fans streamed through a 31,000-foot MLB retail store, even as it grew late on a Saturday. Fanatics and MLB clocked an average of 1,100 transactions every hour across 140 registers.
The much-anticipated centerpiece of MLB’s week in Japan, the regular-season games between the Dodgers and Cubs, were still three days away.
The Tokyo series is going to be the biggest standalone international event in the history of Major League Baseball, league commissioner Rob Manfred said. If MLB has its way, the series will also serve as a beginning. The league sees a trove of fan interest and cash to be unlocked in Japan, a country long obsessed with baseball that has grown infatuated with the defending World Series champion Dodgers and their expat star, Ohtani. The mission at baseball’s central office is to broaden the appeal of the whole league here, and success would not be trivial.
We do believe there are payoffs in the B’s: billions, Manfred said. Manfred expects this Opening Series will set records across the board among league special events, including in viewership and revenue, the latter pegged by Manfred at $35 million. The only comparison he sees is to the league’s annual All-Star Game, an analogy that both flatters and undersells the moment: The midsummer classic is MLB’s premier standalone event, but also never produces the kind of fervor Japan has shown this week.
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