Although it is commonly known as “America’s pastime,” baseball is a global game with strong followings across central and south America, parts of Europe, and perhaps most crucially, Asia.
Japan, South Korea, China, and Chinese Taipei all fielded teams in the 2023 World Baseball Classic (WBC), which Samurai Japan won after beating the US in the final.
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Much of Japan’s success on the international scene (it also won the WBC in 2006 and 2009) is predicated on the strength of its domestic product, Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB), which has in turn fed a steady stream of elite stars to the US’ own Major League Baseball (MLB), the sport’s de-facto elite tier.
In recent years, that pipeline has been intensified, and the level of talent making its way across the Pacific has become greater, chief among them LA Dodgers kingmaker Shohei Ohtani, a dual-threat hitter and pitcher who is rightfully considered the world’s best player.
Ohtani is just one of a cohort of now 12 Japanese players that will compete in MLB in 2025, most recent among these new transfers being prospect Roki Sasaki, also signed for the Dodgers. In 2022, the number of rostered MLB players from Japan was seven, marking what is close to a 100% increase in under three years.
Naturally, this growth, and the continued success of players such as Ohtani and his Dodgers teammate Yoshinobu Yamamoto, has led to MLB gaining a significant following in Japan, where baseball is the most popular sport by both participation and support.
The 2024 World Series won by Ohtani and Yamamoto’s Dodgers, for example, drew record eight-figure viewership in Japan as fans flocked to see the pair’s exploits, to the point where delayed game broadcasts were aired in primetime against the NPB’s own Japan Series finale.
Now, a year in the making, MLB is returning to Japan for the first time since 2019 with the 2025 Tokyo Series, which will see the Dodgers face the Chicago Cubs in a pair of games that will open the 2025 season.
Like the Dodgers, the Cubs, home of Samurai Japanese players Seiya Suzuki and Shota Imanaga, is a team that possesses more domestic player intrigue for the Japanese audience.
The pair of MLB giants will prepare for the Tokyo Series, which will be staged at the Japanese capital’s 45,600-capacity Tokyo Dome across March 15-16, with a pair of warmup fixtures against NPB opposition in the Hanshin Tigers and Yomiuri Giants franchises also taking place beforehand.
Already, a raft of companies have signed on to sponsor the event, on top of the host of Japanese sponsorships the Dodgers franchise already has thanks to Ohtani’s presence, and broadcast distribution within Japan has also been agreed.
All this has come together to a situation where the MLB believes that the 2025 Tokyo Series could be the most successful international series in league history.
Speaking to Sportcal ahead of the series, MLB chief operations and strategy officer Chris Marinak explained: “We think bringing MLB international games, to Japan is a great way to engage the market and to get fans in Asia excited about baseball.
“One of the things that we see is just given the time zones, having our premium product in prime time windows in Asia really creates engagement opportunities for fans, because most of the time our games are on in the middle of the night or very early in the morning [outside the US] and while we still see tremendous engagement, it's still at 8 to 9am. And so, this allows us to put our best product on in a 7pm local window.”
Bringing MLB to Japan
Being able to expose local fans in Japan to the best the MLB has to offer is only boosted when the teams in question also boast a wealth of local talent to serve as touchstones. That 2019 Tokyo Series marked the retirement of Japanese MLB legend Ichiro Suzuki, while the 2025 edition will mark the beginning of two-time NPB all-star Roki Sasaki’s career in the US.
On that Marinak explains: “I think having local star players from different countries is the greatest way to get local fans engaged. Whether that's Japan, Korea, Mexico, having players that grew up in those countries [that] have a connection to the local market, that can represent what it's like to be someone who grew up in those countries, we’ve found to be the greatest way to engage.
“We're proactive about identifying teams that have locally born Japanese players on the roster, so that when we come over there, there is a real connection with the local fan base.”
With this in mind, he adds that the league’s settled status in Japan made MLB’s selection of the Dodgers and the Cubs for the international series simple.
“I think, a whole host of factors go into the ultimate final selection. You have to look at team interest, there's a lot of travel involved, so you’ve got to see what spring training schedules and player development cycles look like.
“But, we landed on those two teams because they were super interested in being in the market and coming to Japan to bring their brand and their team to Japan, and they both have a great stable of local Japanese players that I think helps tell the story once you're on the ground.”
The interest in MLB in Japan is aided, in part, by the fact that Japan does boast such a strong domestic competition. This is not a luxury shared by all US major sports leagues. Neither American football's National Football League, ice hockey's National Hockey League, or in most territories, the National Basketball Association (although it is closer) has a competition in any of its international markets that is as close to a par to it as the NPB is to the MLB.
This is a point Marinak echoes: “We've made this a part of our growth strategy internationally, to have locally successful leagues in our biggest markets. While, of course, we want to have fans in those markets watch MLB games, the World Series, etc., it's also good to have a product that fans can follow in their local market. They can go to games and feel the [sport] up close and personal.
“We actually really work closely with all of those other professional leagues to make sure that they have sustainable pipelines of player development, that they have strong leagues. And we work very closely with them on business issues as well.”
The NPB is one such example, with MLB set to serve as the Japanese league’s official stats provider for the upcoming 2025 campaign, among other collaborations between the two that have laid the groundwork for NPB and MLB teams to compete against each other now.
“We find it to be a really symbiotic relationship, where we both work to prop each other up. And we think that's the best opportunity to grow the game of baseball globally.”
Taking advantage of commercial opportunities
This symbiotic relationship extends to commercial activities. In order to create a sustainable interest in MLB globally, activations and commercial partners outside of the periodic occasion of an international game are necessary. This also creates a year-round relationship that ensures that when the MLB does come to town, the relationship is supercharged, Marinak comments.
“When we're not [in a market] with a game or a series, we have other opportunities for partners to engage, whether it's media opportunities, advertising, whether it's our local development products like the MLB Dream Cup [an MLB organized Japanese amateur baseball tournament] or our Play Ball program, it's about creating a diverse portfolio of opportunities for these partners to engage, and then that creates a sustainable infrastructure year after year, where these partners feel like they can be a part of Major League Baseball in a lot of different ways and connect with different constituents throughout the country.
“We work to have a sort of a diverse array of offerings for those partners, and when you have an event like the Tokyo series, which is special in terms of how much fan interest there is in the event, that's when sponsors really feel like they have an opportunity to engage above and beyond, sort of the day to day experience, and then, and then we use that as a way to get them into the tent, and then grow and build that relationship over time from there.
The” sustainable infrastructure” of the league’s international partnerships is extra valuable for a territory where the league is so heavily embedded. As such, the activation strategy for Japan naturally differs from other markets such as the UK, which MLB visited in 2024 and took a markedly different tact in promoting, in part due to the maturity of Japan as a baseball market.
“In Japan, baseball is already the most popular sport. The NPB is the most popular league, followed by MLB right behind it, so it's not an awareness play. It's really around creating deeper engagement and creating new opportunities for fans to engage.
“So what you're going to see [around the Tokyo Series] is still locally driven, for example we're going to be activating in Tokyo at the Sky Tree [monument], and that's really about reaching [a]broader [fanbase] and creating an experience for them to take pictures, be a part of the game, etc.”
This desire for a wide array of touchpoints for the league in Japan extends to its broadcast makeup, which is similarly diverse. Distribution of MLB’s media rights in Japan is handled by major rights agency Dentsu in an eight-year partnership that will run through the 2028 campaign and could reportedly be worth more than $60 million per year. The league is broadcast by pan-Asian broadcaster SPOTV which holds MLB rights across the region, and recently the Prime Video service secured broadcast rights for the Tokyo Series and associated games.
The sheer variety of distribution outlets to watch the league, be it digital, cable, or the MLB.TV direct-to-consumer service is a major factor in the league’s popularity in the country says Marinak.
The Dodgers are already a proven draw in the country after the rampant success of the World Series, and Marinak states that the massive interest in the league’s showpiece season-ending series is not an opportunity it will pass up in the current global media landscape.
The future of the MLB internationally
“As the media world evolves, I think what you see is that the world is becoming more global, and there's an opportunity to distribute your content and your product in a more global nature.” Marinak comments.
“I think when you see a huge audience in North America, the US, Mexico, Canada, Latin America, that's great to see. And then when you pair that with countries like Japan, Korea, even some of the markets in Europe, I mean, it just creates a global product for us, and it creates an opportunity for us to engage with fans on a global scale, which is where we think the future of the sports world is going.”
When taking that Japan WBC triumph over the US into account, it's obvious that the moment was a major landmark for MLB, perhaps not commercially, but in the eyes of fans everywhere, that America's pastime is now a global pastime. As Ohtani faced up then-teammate Mike Trout in the final at-bat of the competition to raucous applause in Miami, US, commentator John Smoltz said: "Baseball has already won."
For MLB's international strategy in Asia, it seems that sentiment is certainly true. On that day Ohtani struck out Trout to win the tournament, and in the two seasons since he has gone international, first to Seoul in 2024 and now to Tokyo, to stamp his mark on the new era of MLB internationalization.
What that future holds for MLB is still in question, with the current collective bargaining agreement between the league and its players association set to expire in 2026. A future agreement could put more returns to Japan on the cards, but it could equally see MLB shift its focus to new international markets it has never been in before, as the global business of sport opens more pathways.
“We don't have any firm plans after [2026], and we'll be working on that as part of the next basic agreement process. More broadly speaking, what I would say is we have seen a lot of success coming out of COVID by bringing live major league games to different markets around the world. And, I think, conceptually speaking, you're going to see us executing on that strategy, bringing the game to some of the same markets and maybe new markets as well.”
Wherever the league does go, it remains that the strength of its offering in Japan may not be a blueprint due to the unique dynamic of the NPB-MLB relationship, but it will nonetheless serve as an aspirational target for Major League Baseball’s continued international expansion.
