A little over a year ago, Daisuke Matsuzaka, treasure of the Pacific League’s Seibu Lions, boarded a jet belonging to Boston Red Sox owner John Henry to begin a new life on the other side of the globe.
His price tag? A record US$103 million for a six-year contract.
The pitcher is not alone in having made the leap from Nippon Professional Baseball to the US Major League (MLB): Ichiro Suzuki and Hideki Matsui are two other names who, having helped raise the profile of Japan’s game, have been lured away by the promise of considerably more substantial earnings, prestige and prospects.
While such signings may be cause for celebration for the players, they are clearly not good news for Japan’s national pastime, nor for the advertisers who have traditionally invested so heavily in it.
Nippon Professional Baseball’s dwindling attendance, which currently stands at around 20 million a year and generates $1 billion in revenue, contrasts sharply with the continued growth of the MLB, which boasts an attendance of almost 75 million and revenues of $5.5 billion.
“Baseball used to be very important both from a sponsorship point of view and for attracting mass audiences on television,” says John Goodman, president of Ogilvy & Mather, in Japan.
“The sponsors are still paying up, but the mass audience has shrunk considerably. The TV audience has followed the stars to the MLB. This causes major issues for the long-term sustainability of the Japanese game, as revenues dry up.”
Serious news, considering that with the owner’s name appearing before the team’s original name - as in the Yomiuri Giants - the game’s popularity is directly linked to corporate value, as Hiroki Ito, insights director at McCann Erickson Japan, points out.
With the cost of buying and operating a baseball team less than that of buying prime-time advertising space on TV, the players have traditionally been an important PR vessel for many large domestic corporations. Indeed, many teams are run less as profit-making entities in their own right, and more as advertising vehicles for their owners.
But although buying a team may not require a massive payout, low TV revenues and sizeable stadium rental costs mean that most teams act as a drain, losing money and requiring subsidies from parent companies that often spiral into millions of dollars.
So what is the appeal for sponsors? “Return on investment is not a concept which has achieved prominence in Japan in the way that it has in other countries,” observes Goodman.
Citing Yomiuri’s sponsorship of the Giants, he suggests that the main motivation for many companies is simply the chance to display their status as major corporations.
Nonetheless, with Japanese interest in sport diversifying, there also exist many alternatives for investment, notably soccer, says Joe Maekawa, group planning director at McCann Erickson Japan.
“Losing star players to the MLB is one of the reasons for declining ratings, but it’s not the whole story.
We have so many choices for entertainment, that there isn’t that focused an interest in baseball anymore.”
While individuals, such as Matsui, still hold appeal for brands like Asahi, Goodman states that serious advertising investment is unlikely to return until the Japanese game rebuilds its popularity. And that requires a collective, long-term effort for the sport to improve its structure and marketing.
