The 2025 Major League Baseball season is fully underway. Such an event might be the time when I’d point out that baseball is struggling and heading towards the sports’ graveyard. I’ve done it before, despite the sport being my first true love affair.
This piece won’t be one of those pessimistic about baseball’s future. It will be the exact opposite. I think baseball’s got a true chance to be a world phenomenon.
What made me change my mind: The Tokyo Series that took place a little more than a week ago.
The ratings, for those that don’t know, were pretty much off the charts. More than 25 million residents of Japan tuned into the first game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Chicago Cubs. More than 23 million residents of Japan tuned into game two.
To put that game one figure into context, there were only five primetime events in America last year that pulled in more people. (All of those were the NFL.)
America has more than 200 million more people in it than Japan.
Game one’s ratings in Japan would be the equivalent of roughly the equivalent of over 65 million people tuning in to an American television program. Only the Super Bowl pulls in that type of crowd in the States.
It would be easy to suggest that the Tokyo Series was a one-off. The only problem with that line of thinking is last year’s World Series ratings.
The Dodgers and New York Yankees pulled in over 12 million viewers per game in Japan. The average World Series game in the States garnered closer to 16 million.
The fact that Japan’s viewership nearly equaled America’s is nutter-butter given that the games were on in the morning in the home country of Dodgers’ star Shohei Ohtani. If they had been played at night, it’s possible that the average game would have been seen by more people in Japan than in America.
Indeed, the first few games actually had a larger viewership in Japan than in the good ole USA.
When I was a kid, it would basically have been unthinkable that Japan would have more viewers for the World Series than where baseball originated.
But I’m not sure we should be so surprised. One of the bigger problems baseball in America has had is the lack of a bonafide star. We’re a long ways away from Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle. Babe Ruth hasn’t played a game in 90 years.
Ohtani is exactly that star. He leads the league with over 9 million followers on Instagram, which places him about 7 million more than his former teammate Mike Trout.
Ohtani’s popularity in Japan is amazing. A poll last year by The Yomiuri Shimbun found that Ohtani was the country’s favorite athlete for the third year in a row. The percentage who named him as their favorite was higher than any athlete polled before. It is likely that Ohtani would be even more popular in a poll taken this year.
The question for the MLB is whether it can continue to count on support from Japan once Ohtani is not in the picture. It won’t be easy, but it’s definitely possible.
Consider that professional baseball (45%) and high school baseball (40%) were the two top answers given by Japanese respondents when asked to name their favorite sport. The MLB, asked separately, came in fourth at 30% – up from 19% from the year prior. (Respondents were allowed to give multiple answers.)
For comparison, only 10% of Americans said baseball was their favorite sport to watch. That’s way down from the 39% who said so back in the 1940s. Baseball is now well behind football, which more than 40% of Americans said was their favorite sport to watch in 2023.
Baseball is Japan’s pastime in a way it isn’t for America anymore.
The key will be for the MLB to take advantage of this fact. We already know from reporting that the MLB is trying to do that. They’re working to expose the game to the Japanese audience through memorabilia and media deals. As The Athletic put, “the prize could be billions”.
If the MLB is able to work its magic, it could truly put the “world” in the World Series in a way it rarely has been before.
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