On October 8, Tom Negishi of Pacific League Marketing and Jim Small, Senior Vice President of International at Major League Baseball, joined JapanBall’s “Chatter Up!” to discuss their work in expanding the game of baseball beyond borders. For a recap of this discussion, check out our Japanese Baseball Blog; you can also watch the full video on our YouTube channel.
Shane:
I’d like to welcome our first guest, [as] we’re dividing this in half, with two guests. So our first guest is Tomoki “Tom” Negishi, Tom I’m gonna put you on spotlight here so everyone can see you. Welcome. Thank you for joining us.
Tom:
Hi, Hello, everyone, I’m Tom Negishi, from Pacific League Marketing. And I’m very, very happy to be here with you guys, in this such tough pandemic situation. So I hope all [you] guys well, in this situation. Thank you very much for inviting me.
Shane:
Thank you, again, for being here. I really appreciate you taking the time during a workday over there. So for those of you who don’t know, I’m going to give a quick introduction of what Tom-san’s job is, and a little bit about his background. So, he got his start working for the Rakuten Golden Eagles, his start in baseball at least, where he was the Senior Director of Business Development and PR, from 2007 to 2012. And, of course, friend of JapanBall, Marty Kuehnert, was with the Eagles at the same time. And we have Marty to thank for putting us in touch, so that was a nice assist by Marty, and I know that you two have a good relationship. Anyway, so after the Eagles, he went on to Pacific League Marketing as the Chief Operating Officer and the Chief Marketing Officer. And then in 2017, was promoted to CEO of Pacific League Marketing. Pacific League Marketing is a very interesting organization for all of us, [since we’re] mostly in the United States or Canada, and also fans of Japanese baseball. So Pacific League Marketing, their mission is to grow the fanbase of professional Japanese baseball around the world. And Tom and PLM took a big step in those efforts this year by reaching an agreement to broadcast more NPB Pacific League games in the United States than ever before. And that’s only the first step and hopefully that will continue to grow here and also throughout Asia and Latin America. So we’re all really excited about that, and Tom-san once again, thank you for joining us.
Tom:
Yep, thank you very much, and thank you very much for introducing me to all you guys.
Shane:
So I want to start off just by talking a little bit about what I just mentioned; the Pacific League is making some big moves as of late, with games being televised in the US and some even with English broadcasts. Can you let us know what you’ve been up to in that area and what you’re looking to do next season and beyond?
Tom:
Yep, first, we are not NPB marketing, we are just that Pacific League Marketing, one of two NPB leagues, and our company’s mission is to grow and gain [a] new fanbase of Japanese professional baseball, especially Pacific League baseball. And I know there almost seems like no market in the United States, but I feel that there are so many spaces, so we are stepping into the United States market from this season in distribution, and we are now getting around 3000 or 4000 [subscribers] per game from Digital A media. But we still don’t have the accurate subscriber [number] from the cable and satellite TV station[s]. But the total number of subscriber[s] for the Pacific League games per game will be almost 10,000 or something like that. So I feel that that’s not [a] bad number, but from U.S. guys, it’s a small number. From the Japanese marketing company, that’s not bad. And we hope our marketing activities in the United States will continue to the next year or after, so that we are now negotiating [with] some media company in the United States. And also, we have Pacific League TV that is [a] live streaming service like MLB TV in the United States, so we cover all over the world, including United States. But unfortunately, we have only Japanese language services so far. So we are not ready to launch the English commentary service and also the Chinese Mandarin services so far, but I’m not sure that it’s open from the next opening matches in the 2021 season, but we are now working very hard to launch the new English and Chinese Mandarin commentary services. So we are keep[ing] more effort to get you the best in the United States and Canada and the Latin market.
Shane:
That’s great to hear. And you mentioned the English language broadcasts, I’m curious… Gabe is actually putting in the chat [that] he’s volunteering, we have one volunteer to be a broadcaster for you already… but what is your process? I’m curious. I know a lot of people, it would be a dream job for them to be a broadcaster [for] Japanese Pacific League games in English, are you looking for someone with credibility that’s known in the US? Or someone who’s like a really serious follower of Japanese baseball already? And what is that process like?
Tom:
So, our marketing staff is now seek[ing] possibility [on] how to launch English commentary services. So we are now planning to do all of everything from now on, because the total subscribers number over in the United States Pacific League is not bad.
Shane:
With the broadcasts that Pacific League TV is doing. If you watch games in the United States nowadays, especially during the playoffs, it’s been quite a different experience with these new camera angles. Of course, they have the stats involved, there’s a pace of game that makes it more TV friendly… is the Pacific League looking to do anything that’s kind of revolutionary or different in their telecasting of games and how they present the game?
Tom:
As you might know, in NPB’s Pacific League, each individual club is owned by a corporate company, and the Pacific League’s parent companies [are] from the innovative company; such Rakuten or SoftBank or something like that, so that they like to work innovative, so that we are trying to get something new, such as like the [different] angle camera, and our foreign language commentary. So, we always keep working with some innovative ways, so we are always discussing something new to make it happen.
Shane:
Yeah, that’s quite a resource to have, companies like Rakuten and SoftBank to work with. Speaking of Rakuten, I’m curious about your time working with [the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles]. I guess you weren’t there at the very beginning of their existence but close to the beginning. What was it like working for a modern, brand new team that seemed to have not been afraid to do things differently because they’re a brand new team?
Tom:
Yep- I enjoyed the work [with the] parent company Rakuten Eagles, and I especially had some good teachers of the baseball business industry. The one of them is Marty Kuehnert, as you know, he taught us everything about his baseball business, that was a sports business, and also our team member. We visited each individual Major League Baseball ballpark and minor league ballpark, we were kept up with something new and what was happening in the United States; we enjoyed what was happening, and to build it from scratch in the Sendai market. So, yeah, it was very exciting.
Shane:
Yeah, and I can attest, and anyone on this call can attest too, it is a fun experience going to the Eagles game. So you all did a very good job, and Marty as well. Toshiki is looking to work in baseball, is Pacific League Marketing hiring college graduates? It seems like you’re a growing business, so I’m curious just about the trajectory of your company and specifically, are you hiring?
Tom:
Yeah, from last year, we are hiring the graduate, the college student or something who had the master degree, so we are always open; we don’t care [if] you’re a college student or something at a company, we’re always open, so please send us your resume or something like that if you’re interested in working with our company. I’m happy to use it.
Shane:
Another thing I’m curious about, I’m more asking for my own benefit, I’m constantly explaining to baseball fans who maybe aren’t as familiar with the Japanese game why NPB baseball is so awesome. And Japanese baseball in general, not even just professional baseball, for a lot of the obvious reasons; you know, the fan experience, and the style of play, and the history of the teams. Of course, that is your job as well, so I’m curious about how you sell the Japanese game to a new audience and what you think are the main attractions to a casual baseball fan.
Tom:
Thanks. I think we have two strong points, one is on field, the other one is off the field. The on-field, I think it’s a different culture from [the] United States; it’s small baseball, but our play is now playing very technical; Ichiro as you might know, Shogo Akiyama, the great hitters [were] in Pacific League. So I think there are not so many home runs in [the] Pacific League, or not so many hits, so there’s a lot of technical batters, and so the technical pitchers, like Yu Darvish and Masahiro Tanaka, are all from Pacific League. So I think you guys are enjoying [a] different type of baseball from [the] United States. And also I liked to mention off [the] field. If someone, a guy’s visiting our ballpark in Japan, I think it’s a very, very big difference from the United States ballpark, atmosphere. One of them is cheerleaders. Every team has that cheer group, so once the game started, in the outfield stands, they lead all of everything, and they are singing and they’re dancing and clapping. So the atmosphere is very unique. So I want to show the different ways to the United States from that broadcast and internet streaming site. And also some teams have unique equipment in the ballpark. For example the Eagles had, how do I say, [Ferris Wheel?] The Eagles have that such as a small entertainment park, and not only watching baseball but also the kids and the family are enjoying the day. So I think it’s a very unique way, so I would drive to show both on field and off field to enjoy the all of the baseball back to the United States so that’s the first step for us.
Shane:
I like that answer, I think maybe I’ll just copy that answer and use it for my JapanBall marketing! But it’s a good point too about the players who came from the Pacific League in Shogo Akiyama and of course Ichiro so a lot of the fans that come on our tours are very purist baseball fans, and one thing I like about the Japanese version of the game is that it’s a little bit of a throwback, compared to what you see in the Major Leagues now… I don’t know if anyone here was watching the A’s and Astros series, but it’s like 15 runs scored on 12 solo home runs, and home runs are fun until they’re not. If you like the way a guy like Shogo Akiyama or Ichiro plays the game, then you get to see that on a league-wide scale, which is really fun. It makes for a fun viewing experience. I’m curious, just going backwards a little bit, about your background? Like what team did you root for growing up? Were you a big baseball fan? And what led you to working for the Eagles, and into working in baseball in general?
Tom:
For me, it’s my life. I like baseball, and I like sports. And prior to working for Rakuten Eagles, I was at Johnson & Johnson, that is the global makeup. And I hoped to work in the sports business, and just because I liked sports and I like baseball, and at that point, the Rakuten Eagles, that job position is open. So I applied for it immediately. That’s it.
Shane:
It sounds like a great move you made from Johnson & Johnson, and I’m sure you didn’t know where it would take you, but it ended up being a very rewarding decision; it seems that there’s a lot more ahead of you.
Tom:
So far, in the NPB and Pacific League Baseball industry, is a little bit conservative. And the important position is shared with something for [a] graduated baseball player or related baseball guys, but I was a basketball player in the school era. And also I’m from the industry, so that I have a different perspective, and it’s very important to marketing something. So yeah, I enjoy all over everything I work with.
Shane:
That’s interesting that you mentioned that there’s becoming more opportunities for non-baseball people in Japan, which a similar movement was happening in the United States within the last 10 or 15 years? That’s what inspired me to work in baseball too, the fact that it was opening up to non-baseball people, even though [I was] second-team all-league in high school. I thought at the time, I was a baseball guy. But we have a couple of questions from our guests. So, Eric, I’m going to go to you now.
Eric:
Hey everybody. Thanks Tom for joining us. I believe I had seen that PLM had signed a working agreement with UMass and their sports business program, and was just curious about what you’re looking to do with that, and I guess if you’re looking into making any kind of partnerships like that with other other universities or organizations in the States.
Tom:
Thank you for asking me, we have a partnership with UMass, as you said, from this year, but to be honest, everything has stopped due to the COVID situation, but our aim of partnership with UMass is to adopt their knowledge and something that expertise from the sports education side, because we’re always operating on the field and off the field, but I think that from a small perspective. So we are keeping minds more open and more wide, determining not only our heart and our knowledge, but also the market, and UMass’ graduate organization that has so many human connections all over the world. So, we drive to adopt all of that, everything from them. And also, we are now operating Pacific League Business School, that is something new in the sports business category, to the six Pacific League clubs’ employees. So, we set the timer, today is marketing, tomorrow is sports tech, tech in the US, or something like that. So, we invite every year from the United States or domestically in Japan. So we are now planning to invite some teacher[s] or professional professor[s] from UMass to the Pacific League Business School. So that is one of them, and then after that, we want to grow more and more, not only [in the] Japan market, but also the global market.
Toshiki:
Tom, thank you for being here. Really appreciate it, and it’s great to meet you. The question I have is, baseball is my dream, and I’d love to be a part of it upon graduation, in May next year, I’m a senior in college, I go to University of Maryland, studying business. So if you could provide me with any kind of advice or direction for me to get into the industry, that would be amazing. And also if I’m not able to get a job in baseball right out of college, do you have any recommendation on what kind of industry that I should go for if I want to make it there someday?
Tom:
Okay. Thank you for asking me. So I’d like to comment on your question, I recommend that you choose the industry you like, and also that I recommend that to work in the sports industry, especially in Japan, I think to define your strong point of view, so something in finance, or the sales and marketing, or something represents, so I think you define your strong point. That’s my advice for you.
Toshiki:
Thank you so much.
Shane:
Ian, you’re up next.
Ian:
Ohayou gozaimasu. O-genki desu ka. (Good morning. How are you?)
Toshiki is actually bilingual. He speaks nihongo (Japanese) and eigo (English) and he played baseball in college, so he’d be a great hire. My question is, right now it’s just Pacific League marketing, and there’s no there’s no CL (Central League) TV. So do you see a future where there is NPB TV, and an NPB app in English? Because MLB TV is great, and MLB does a great job of marketing baseball to Japan. And my second question is, do you see Pacific League or Central League games ever being on ESPN or Fox?
Tom:
Thank you for asking me. And the first question, about CL TV and NPB TV, I got that question a ton of times, and I answered a ton of texts. Hopefully. Hopefully the NPB TV is awesome and should be, but not nothing has happened, because as you might know, the NPB industry and individual club, has stronger power than NPB the organization. So everything is from the each individual clubs, and especially in the Central League, there are the Yomiuri Giants, that is like the New York Yankees in the United States, and the Yomiuri Giants has huge power in any NPB industry, because NPB history is built by Yomiuri, and also Yomiuri’s parent company is Nippon TV, that is one of the big TV stations in Japan. So, from the MLB perspective, all of the 30 Clubs and MLB industry is growing, more and more happy for everybody. But in NPB industry, the individual club has strong power, and each club is owned by the parent company. So the parent company is working and growing their own company group, including the baseball club, and it’s a little bit that they don’t care what’s going on in other clubs. For example, in [the] Central League the Yomiuri Giants owned by Yomiuri Shimbun, that is a big operation newspaper company, and also in [the] Central League, and also the Chunichi Dragons, they’re owned by Chunichi Shimbun that is also a big publishing industry. So the parent company industry is competitive, so that it’s something like conflict. So we can get together the old clubs in NPB, and also, I guess that Central League marketing or Central League TV is not existing in that. So it’s very individual thinking, I think. But on the other hand, in Pacific League, SoftBank and Rakuten are the companies, very innovative and their mother company is working in the global market, not domestic market. So their scope is wide and open. So I think there is a Pacific League Marketing here, but not Central League Marketing and NPB marketing, it’s not here. But in the near future, the NPB TV and the NPB marketing should be. But I have no idea so far, for the NPB.
Ian:
My second question was do you see games being on ESPN or Fox?
Tom:
Honestly speaking, we negotiated with ESPN this year, but that has not completed and Fox, we are not negotiating so far, but we are now planning to negotiate with them.
Shane:
That’s great. We look forward to seeing how that turns out, we’re rooting for you. Ian thanks for those questions. Tom we’ve got one more question.
Gabe:
Ohayou gozaimasu, Negishi-san. My question is, there’s a window of opportunity coming up, where the World Series is going to finish on October 28; that leaves two weeks where only NPB is playing, last two weeks of the regular season, then the PL Climax series. Are there going to be any plans for an expanded English language presence at that point? Because you could get a lot of eyeballs at that point, you’d be the biggest game in town.
Tom:
Yeah. We don’t have something planned for English commentary for the big games, and we are managing only Pacific League games, so that we don’t carry the Nippon Series. But we don’t have any plans so far, but from next season, we bring something for the English commentary game, and the Japanese commentary season.
Gabe:
Like I said in the chat, I’d be happy to volunteer, and please don’t forget us Canadians; work out a deal with Sportsnet or TSN please.
Tom:
Okay, so Gabe, please text me. And Shane has my email address.
Gabe:
Arigato gozaimasu.
Shane:
All right. Well, we’re right at the deadline. I feel very proud that with our Japanese guests that we’re on perfect timing. So I’m speaking for everyone here, and everyone who is going to see this afterwards, when I say thank you very much for joining us, it was really great to hear your insights, and it’s really exciting to see what you’re doing, and we’re all rooting for you here. So thank you so much for joining us, and hope you enjoy the rest of your day over there, and your weekend coming up.
Tom:
Thank you very much for giving me such an awesome opportunity. And again, thank you, Shane, and everybody, and I’ll keep in touch and stay safe in the house in tough situation. I’ll be very glad if you could visit Japan and watch our Pacific League game in [the] ballpark, I always welcome you. Thank you very much.
Shane:
Thank you. Arigato gozaimasu.
Tom:
Bye bye.
Shane:
All right. Well, thank you all for your questions, it was really interesting to hear his updates and what they’re working on, and it seems like it’s a good time to be a fan of Japanese baseball. So now, right on cue, Jim [Small] just joined us. So Jim, I’m gonna just put you on the camera here so everyone can see you.
Jim:
Hi guys! I see some faces I know there, you Shane and Yuriko and a few others.
Shane:
Yeah, we’re happy to have you here. It’s good to see you. So I’m going to give a quick introduction for those who aren’t familiar with Jim’s background, and then, just like with Tom, I’ll ask a couple questions, then I encourage you all to use the raise hand feature and ask Jim questions yourself. So just a quick intro here. So Jim is a baseball lifer, sort of a long career in baseball, starting out in PR with the Royals and the Rangers and the Commissioner’s Office. In 2003, he was charged with establishing MLB’s first Asian office in Tokyo, and then he went on to lead that office for the next 15 years as MLB’s VP of Asia Pacific. During that time, he helped make the MLB game more accessible to Japanese fans than ever before. There was a great wave of talent coming to the US, which you were able to capitalize on and it’s an exciting time. He also established WBC in 2006, helped with those efforts, which, of course, is a huge deal in Japan, even though some of the Americans have been slower to get into it, you know that in Japan it’s been a big deal for a long time, and Jim is right in the middle of it from the beginning. A couple years ago, he moved back to New York as MLB’s Senior VP of International; in this position, he oversees all of MLB’s International Offices, six of them. He’s in charge of helping to grow the brand and the game talent-wise and business-wise. He is in charge of the schedule of games played abroad, which I know a lot of us have been to whether in Japan or elsewhere. And also the WBC falls under his domain. It’s in the WBC that I first got to know Jim, we worked together for a couple of WBCs, including the since-postponed qualifier that stopped in Tucson this year. And Jim has always been a good friend of JapanBall, something for which Bob Bavasi and I are both really grateful for and it’s always a treat to work with Jim and definitely a treat to have you on with us. So thanks for joining us.
Jim:
Thanks, Shane, and thanks to everyone for having me on. I am actually fortunately in the JapanBall Hall of Fame; it’s the only Hall of Fame I’m ever going to make, so I’m really, really proud of it. And I’ve known you for a long time, and Bob, and I just love what you guys do and think it’s awesome. And I wish there were more people that were interested in Japanese Baseball or international baseball because there’s so much of it around the world. It’s so unique and different depending on the market, whether it’s in Brazil, or in Europe or in Asia, it’s awesome. So I wish more people were like you and kind of reaching out and learning about it.
Shane:
I can’t believe I didn’t start with the fact that you’re a JapanBall Hall of Famer.
Jim:
I don’t want to break my arm patting myself on the back. But Bob’s nice and gave me a trophy, and it’s up in my office and in New York. So I’m proud of it.
Shane:
I’m happy to hear that. Well, on that note, let’s start in Japan with the questions here. I imagine that some of the younger fans in Japan maybe take for granted the access they have to the MLB brand. And, of course, that’s thanks to a lot of the work you put in. What’s the current state of things for MLB in Japan? Are you looking to grow that? Or do you feel you’re in a good place for now, and you’re looking elsewhere? Yeah, the general state of things.
Jim:
Absolutely. So look, we’ve been really, really fortunate, that we’ve really grown our brand or presence in Japan, in and around Asia. But all of that started, as Shane said, in 2003. My bosses said, “Look, we should have [a] full-time presence in Japan.” At the time, our business was really done through a bunch of agents. So we had an agent that did sports marketing or sponsorship, we had an agent that did licensing, we had somebody else that did our media business, and Ichiro had come over two years earlier, and there was really some low hanging fruit. Two things: one is that we thought we could build our business and grow our business, but also, we thought we could do things that were going to better serve our fan[s] there. And so, I was tasked with the idea of going over and figuring it out, right? So my job was to work out the tax implications, the legal implications, all that stuff. That was all easy. I just couldn’t find anyone to run the office. And so, my boss at the time and I were flying to a meeting in Switzerland, and I told him, “Look, I can’t find anyone to run the office.” And he said, “Well, would you do it?” And I said, “Yeah, I might want to do that for a couple years.” And I called my wife, and this is Reason #651 why I married over my head; I waited for her to wake up, called her and said, “Hey, you want to move to Japan for a couple years?” And she said, “Yeah, that’s great!” So we did it. And it was when our kids were seven, five and two. Baseball gave me a credit card and said, “Go figure it out.” There was no infrastructure, I was the only employee there for about eight months. and relied on, you probably know some of these names, like Marty Kuehnert and Wayne Graczyk, and guys like that just to show me the ropes when I first got there. We really didn’t have much of a presence at the time. Our games were shown via traditional channels, right, so we were on NHK, and we had five or six different stations that aired us, but there really wasn’t a digital offering at the time, so we weren’t really able to kind of connect in the way we wanted to. So, what I tried to do is two things: one is to build out that presence, right? So build out the ability for our hardcore fan, whether they be English-speaking or non-English-speaking, to watch any game they want, whenever they want, for a MLB game. The second thing we did was to kind of build on our basic brand, so try to get more people involved in it. So we started running grassroots programs, we started working, growing a presence at retail, right, so with MLB shops. A big thing that we did was something to follow up that we started in 2000, which was playing major league games, and the 2000 games were important for us because they were the first ones; it was the Mets and the Cubs. But 2004 really kind of changed everything for us. And that’s because we brought the Yankees and we brought Hideki Matsui, and that kind of elevated what we were doing there at a pretty high level. Being able to bring a brand like the Yankees, and bringing Hideki Matsui back to play was pretty amazing. I don’t know if any of you happened to be there and or know about what happened. But that first game, we brought the teams over and they played exhibition games. It was Tampa and the Yankees. They play exhibition games against the two Japanese teams, so it was Hanshin and the Giants, and the Giants game I think was the second game that the Yankees have played. And it’s packed, 46,000 people in the stadium, and you know if you’ve gone to Japanese games there before, you know it’s really loud in the outfield section, not always as loud in the infield, right? So it’s very much the home crowd really gets into things. And when we play there, it’s even quieter because there’s no cheers for the MLB teams, right? There’s no oendan (official cheering section) for the MLB teams. So first inning, I can’t remember who the pitcher was for the Giants, but Matsui comes up and every eye in that stadium, and every eye on television, this is his first time back at the Dome; a Giants hero, he’s back playing in a Yankee uniform. And his first at-bat, he hits a bomb, and it was the loudest I’ve ever heard that stadium. Shane said I work for the Rangers, for the Chicago Cubs, for the Royals. I’ve worked probably a couple thousand MLB games; I’ve never heard a stadium that loud. And that’s so rare. And to have that just diffusive, combustive thing, that was really important for us, and we built on that. So four years later we brought you know [Daisuke] Matsuzaka and the Red Sox, four years after that, which was one year after everything happened up in Tohoku, we brought the Mariners and Ichiro, and then we brought Ichiro again in 2019. So, I’d say- it’s a long answer to your question, Shane- I’d say it’s a combination of making sure we’re coming over there on a regular basis to bring different teams to play, those games are generally featuring Japanese players coming home, which I think is really important. We’ve done a better job of getting the game on the right device at the right time. One challenge that we have, and all North American sports leagues have this challenge, when you’re selling a media product, North American sports are a huge disadvantage. Right? So the World Series is on at 2am in Paris, and it’s on at 9am on a weekday in Tokyo, right? Those are terrible viewing hours. So we have to find a way around that. So, those are the types of things we’ve done. I’m very bullish on the future of the MLB brand in Japan. I spend, probably, unfortunately, because Japan is my home, I raised my family there. My kids identify living in Japan better than living in the United States, it was a culture shock for them to come back when they went to college. But I must say that unfortunately, now I probably spend about 2% of my time in Japan, and the rest of the time is on the rest of our business around the world, where we’re investing heavily in places like India, and China and Mexico and Germany and the UK. So that gets more of my time, but Japan gets my heart every time.
Shane:
Well said. Rob Fitts says he was at that game and he has to ask, did the Giants groove that pitch to Matsui?
Jim:
I knew he would bring that up. That’s why I brought that up, because I can’t remember who the pitcher was, because there was talk that he grooved that pitch, but I don’t care. If you have 46,000 people there waiting to see you hit a home run, hitting a homer is really hard, right? Even if it’s a grooved pitch. So I think it could have been and I don’t care. He still did it.
Shane:
So staying in Japan, you mentioned the initial reception, how you’re just kind of thrown to the fire, or the initial kind of challenge. What was the reception like? Obviously there’s a big baseball establishment, whether it’s the Federation or NPB, were they threatened? And how did you work together with them?
Jim:
Well, the second week I was there, this is August of 2003. A guy named Hasegawa was the Secretary General for the NPB, and the commissioner at the time; the commissioners have always been very nice and very accommodating and stuff, but Hasegawa was the Secretary General, and he asked me to come speak to the owners in an owners meeting. And so, I went in; at the time, I spoke almost no Japanese, and so I had to speak in English. Let’s just say the reception was icy, it was a lot of people staring at me, as I walked in and I, you know, I felt like I was an ambassador presenting my credentials at the Kremlin or something but it was not very pleasant. Japanese baseball has changed so much since then, just what Tom said. So, at the time, I have a friend that worked in NPB, who shall remain nameless, that said that the NPB likes to “blame-storm” instead of brainstorm, and when Ichiro left and Matsui left, there was fingers being pointed at us for stealing them. But those players, and all players [that] have gone since, left under a negotiated agreement between MLB and NPB, so nobody stole anybody; those guys were free to leave, or they were posted. The players have a right to go, right? So if a kid is working for Panasonic, and gets offered a job to work for a computer software company in Silicon Valley, no one would say a word about that. So it was really a false narrative. And at the time, I’d say 2003 to 2007, You had baseball in Japan, I think, thriving despite the marketing, not because of the marketing, right? A lot of you may know this story, but when Bobby [Valentine] got fired the second time from the Marines, there was a meeting and the notes of that meeting got out. And somebody said, “Bobby’s very popular with the fans, what will we tell the fans when we fire Bobby?” And someone in the meeting, at a very high level, said that the fans are “like carp, they’ll eat what we feed them.” And that that pretty much summed up Japanese baseball, there was a disincentive, and there has been a disincentive, I think, for Japanese teams to make money, right? Because the way with “Yakult” on the front of the jersey, if the team loses money, they can write that off as an advertising expense. And if the team makes money, they can’t write that off, so there’s no real incentive to make money, and so if there’s no incentive to make money, who loses? Fans. There was a general perception that [there’s a] game today, and if people show up, great, if not, maybe they’ll come tomorrow. Well, that doesn’t work, we’re in the entertainment business. And so, we have a three hour window to entertain people, and if we don’t give you what you want, you’re not going to come back. And that’s one of the reasons why you saw from the ‘94 strike that we had until recently, the attendance [was] dormant through the roof. NPB didn’t look at it that way. There are multiple examples, all in the public domain, by the way, that you could go look at. I remember, there was a General Manager from one of the teams that had come over from the parent company- this is probably 2006, ‘07- and was asked if he could name- this is general manager, the guy that makes baseball decisions- and he was asked to name one of his players, one of his players, and he couldn’t, at his opening press conference. So that’s what you had in Japanese baseball, and that has changed; it’s changed with people like Tom being involved. There are some really, really smart people that have come into the game and forced that change. I see kind of what’s going on up in Sendai is a perfect example of that. You go to a Rakuten game, and there’s stuff going on outside of the ballpark, you go in, it’s easy to buy food and beverages, there’s a carnival area in the outfield for kids, they re-did the whole seating. So it’s not unusual, right? There are other teams that do that same thing. So I think that it has changed quite a bit. But back when I started in 2003, it wasn’t it wasn’t great.
Shane:
Well, I’m glad it’s changing, I think we all are here, it’s been fun to watch. I’m going to jump to an audience question here.
Ian:
Hi, Jim. So my question, this is also a bit of a comment too. I have some Japanese friends who are hardcore baseball fans, like from a scale of 1 to 10, they’re 11s. And they say that MLB does a very bad job of marketing non-Japanese baseball players. MLB does a great job of advertising Yu Darvish, Kenta Maeda, Tanaka, etc. But do you think there is a market beyond non-hardcore Japanese? Beyond non-hardcore baseball fans in Japan for guys like Mike Trout?
Jim:
It’s a really, really good question. And it’s something that used to keep me up at night, because back before we had Ichiro, you looked at the non-Japanese players who had endorsement deals, and there were a lot of them. So Cal Ripken had a deal, Mike Piazza had a deal. [Ken Griffey] Jr. had a deal, all of these guys had endorsement deals and would come over, right, Randy Johnson was over all the time. And then when Ichiro came, it dropped off a cliff, basically, Ichiro kind of was a supernova, that from an advertising perspective, that’s all people wanted to focus on. And then it got more difficult to get those, you know, facetime for the non-Japanese players, because you had Matsuzaka and Matsui. And look, no matter what, Darvish is amazing, and I think [Shohei] Ohtani, those are the big three, so those changed everything, and they were right on top of each other. And so, those guys kind of added to that supernova effect, and so I was worried about it because what do we do if we run out of Japanese players, and what is that going to do to our brand? And so we did a couple things. One is we tried to bring in more players- you can’t look at it now you got to look at it when they came- we had guys like Prince Fielder come, we had guys like Curtis Granderson come, we did some more stuff with Randy Johnson. It was hard to get the attention. One of the really telling things we did is we did have a deal with a comic book company that we paid for. We hired the writers, we did all of this stuff. And it was a comic book that’s aimed at basically high school kids that love baseball. And we did a deal with the Players’ Association. Again this was 2007 or 2006, so think about it in terms of that year. We had in the comic book Dustin Pedroia, and Barry Bonds might have been in there, Tim Lincecum was in there, our good young stars, and it just didn’t go anywhere. It didn’t get anywhere. So we’ve tried to push hard to get more people to focus on those players. The problem is- and we benefit from this so I got to be careful when I say this- but NHK will show Ichiro’s four at-bats every night, even if three if not four were groundouts, and not show Mike Trout hitting a Grand Slam. So we coddle them, we push them, but it’s really, really hard. So I would say you should tell your friends the market conditions are very different, and it’s difficult. I also have come to a little bit more at ease about it, because I don’t know if that’s a problem. I don’t know if we need to worry about that, because we do have a series of players coming over. I know Japanese fans are sophisticated enough to know that “Yeah, those guys are great. But my guy’s great.” I think that’s really what’s happened for the World Baseball Classic, and to improve the success of the players there. I absolutely believe that there was- I heard it from so many people, friends, non-friends- when I first got there, that there was some inferiority complex about players from Japan. “Well, our guys can’t go over.” And you know, [Hideo] Nomo was just kind of out of the ordinary and stuff, but “a position player could never do that.” And then Ichiro goes. “Okay, well, yeah, but you can’t have a power hitter from Japan.” Well, then, you got Matsui. “Okay, but you’re never gonna have a power pitcher.” Then Yu Darvish, and then you had Ohtani, who wrapped all of that stuff together. So I think that that created that vacuum, or that feeling kind of created the opportunity for a lot of fans to say,” Oh, I’m gonna watch the MLB power, right and see Mike Piazza.” But I think now they’re like, “we got some pretty good players,” and they’ve seen it, you’ve seen it in the World Baseball Classic, and you know, how outstanding they’ve been?
Ian:
Thank you so much for answering; all my hardcore friends have MLB TV, do you think that’s helping a lot?
Jim:
It is, but the challenge for MLB TV is it’s a English language product. So you have to speak English really to enjoy it, maybe not fluently, you can still watch all the games, but it allows us to differentiate. This is a business, it is not a charity, it is a business, and we have Dentsu paying us a lot of money to sublicense out our rights to our games in Japan, so we have to be cognizant of that. And look, this is a problem we have everywhere in the world; same challenge, not a problem. How do you satisfy that hardcore fan that wants to watch Kansas City versus Tampa, which is maybe not a big game anywhere else, but if you’re a baseball fan, you want to see, [Blake] Snell pitch, right? So how do you do that, and make access available and not erode your bread-and-butter media business. So I think we’ve got a pretty good balance of it by keeping it in English language. We don’t think we take any viewers away from NHK or J-Sports or anybody else, but it’s a great tool for us for that hardcore fan. And I do think that you’re going to see a change in MLB TV in the next few years, where right now it is just games, and we’re going to add more content to it. We have all of this content that we can put on there, whether it be movies or features with players, all of that stuff. You’re going to see a more robust MLB TV, I think, in the next few years.
Shane:
All right, we had a number of people with their hands up so we’re gonna keep going to our guests. Bob, you’re up next.
Bob:
I got my first opportunity to see international baseball with JapanBall, so that was kind of cool. It kind of motivated me after I retired to travel to many different countries to watch baseball. And so I know about MLB in their marketing of China and India now. One country that made kind of a swoop a couple years ago, made it the Little League World Series, was Uganda. So I don’t know, just kind of a general question. What do you think of MLB’s expansion into Africa? Is that just too small a marketing place to even consider it?
Jim:
That is a great question. The Uganda thing, a lot of that, like the Dodgers have an academy in Uganda. So some of our clubs are sold on baseball in Africa, and I think the trip to the Little League World Series helped kind of spur them to do that stuff. So one of the things is- I’m a baseball lifer, as has been said- in the past 23 years, I’ve worked on the international side. And one of the things that I said I would change, if I ever ran the business… you have to be careful about this, right, because we all have bosses, and you’re like, “If I ever become the boss, I’m going to do this.” But one of the things I was focused on is we need to get more focused in our business, we only have so much resource, right? And when I’m spending money doing these things, I’m spending someone else’s money; this is the owners’ money, it’s not my money. So we need to be really, really focused on where we operate, where we do business, and where we spend money. And that kind of was the way we were, but it was based out of good-heartedness. So for example, we would have people, and I’m guilty of this, I’d have someone in Cambodia contact me and say, “we love baseball, we really want your help.” And so we do stuff with them, and I got wonderful, amazing stories about going into Cambodia and helping there. But we would do these little pockets around the world. But what happens is, it just dilutes the ability to to really make an impact. So when I got asked to come back and lead our international business last year, I have two reporting lines. So I report to the head of revenue, a guy named Noah Garden but I also have a dotted line to ten owners on an International Committee, and Stan Kasten, at the time of the Dodgers, was the President of that committee. He is all gung-ho on international – not just Uganda, he’s one of the guys doing the Uganda stuff. But he is all in on growing the game internationally. So what do you think we should do? And so I said, “Look we have to spend more money, we have to do more, but do it in fewer places.” And so basically, he and the commissioner asked me to do this study, and we did it and presented it in November, and then finalized in last February, and basically what we did is say “Look, we need to focus our resources in five countries with growth markets, these are places where we think we can over-index.” We looked at everything, we looked at Africa, we looked at Brazil, we looked at other parts of Latin America; jokingly we looked at Antarctica, we talked about trying to send baseball equipment down there so we could have done something on every continent. But the five places we picked were places that we thought were either an opportunity because something was already happening there, some of it our doing some of it not our doing, or a place where if you’re going to be really called a world sport, you have to have a footprint, you have to have something there to be able to do it. So the five places we picked were Germany, the UK, Mexico, China, and India. So what we’re going to do is over-index in those place and do more than we will elsewhere. Then there’s a tier below that, which is our core markets, which we’re going to keep investing in. So that’s Japan, it’s Korea, it’s Taiwan, it’s the Caribbean countries, it’s Australia, believe it or not, where some great baseball played. And then, there’s a third category, which is kind of everything else. And when I say everything else, we’re going to keep an eye on stuff. So we’re going to keep an eye on Africa, we’re going to keep an eye on Brazil, we have major leaguers from Brazil, we have some activities down in Brazil, I’m actually very bullish, it was really hard to pull them out of the five, I initially I had six but and I pulled out Brazil simply because it was we were just getting too diluted. So I believe in baseball in Brazil. In terms of Africa… so before I went to Tokyo, I was in the European office, which included Africa reporting up to me, and we started doing a ton of stuff in South Africa. And we worked with a lot of really smart people, consultants. I had worked at Nike for a while, so I was fortunate to work with people, and the model there was, if you invest in South Africa, eventually it will go up the continent, and you won’t have to go do things in every market. It’ll just do South Africa and South Africa will go up. And that’s what we’re trying to do in these markets where we go and invest. Our goal is to invest, get local pickup, and then kind of kind of pull out and go back in with our traditional marketing. You don’t have to invest in getting kids to play baseball in Japan, right? They love the game, right? So we don’t have to, it’s a waste of our money to over-index and spend too much money there. So in South Africa, we started doing a lot of stuff, and we ran many academies, they have a really good baseball federation there. We’ve had some success there. So the Pirates had a player, Gift Ngoepe, the WBC team from South Africa did well, it never really translated to go up the continent. So where we’re at right now- this was all pre-COVID- we were working on a plan with a WBSC, the World Baseball Softball Confederation, to do an Africa kind of development program in conjunction with them. So we would do things like have MLB employees work with a federation in Uganda or in Cameroon, to advise them, to be a mentor to them, because these Federation presidents and officials are generally people that [are] like “My kid’s on this team, So now I got to try to run the Federation. I have no experience whatsoever.” So we’re trying to do those types of things, with an eye on if we see an opportunity to move a country, any country in Africa into that growth, we’ll do it.
Shane:
I want to go deeper into it, but I’m gonna refrain because we have a lot of guests’ questions. And also I have to mention, Leon says, “I’ve been to six countries in Africa, and he saw a Yankees cap in every single one of them.” Gabe, I’m going to you next.
Gabe:
Evening. Jim. How you doing tonight? My question is around the Canadian game; what is MLB doing to try and grow the game beyond just Toronto in Canada? I’m not sure if we count as an international market because we do have the Blue Jays, but there seems to not be too much beyond just marketing the Jays. I know that some provinces are territories of other teams like BC’s all Mariners land, Winnipeg is Twins town, but I’m curious what role Canada plays in the larger scheme in MLB international?
Jim:
Absolutely. So the Blue Jays complicate things, but they also provide an opportunity, so I always look at that there. There are always opportunities, every challenge brings an opportunity. The challenge is that we can’t go in with a traditional mindset, to treat Canada the way we would say Mexico, where we have, the ability for MLB to operate, free and clear down there. So we have what we call an agency agreement, which is an agreement among the 30 teams, to say essentially outside the United States, MLB International represents you and your business rights. And that creates opportunities, but it’s there that creates challenges on its own. So if I’m representing 30 teams in Japan, for instance, I can’t just put the Yankees at the top or the Red Sox to the top, right, I have to be fair to all of them. And that sometimes can be difficult. But in Canada, we have a big challenge, which is one of our 30 teams has a very wide swath of the Canadian market. So we don’t want to do anything that’s going to infringe on them, our goal is to work for the team. So our job is to increase the value for those teams. So on the business side, we’ve done a lot of cooperations with the Blue Jays in terms of whether it’s selling the ability to have other media rights with Rogers, or we have five or six different sponsor deals. So we sometimes have the Blue Jays, so a sponsor can say- I’m using them as an example- but we could go to Tim Hortons and say, “Look, you can have the Blue Jays logo through the Blue Jays. But if you want to have coffee cups from all 29 other teams, do a deal with us.” So we’ve done things like that that have been helpful. So that’s kind of from the business side, we have some abilities to do that. For the baseball development side, it’s funny that you bring this up, because I had a conversation with our baseball development people, people that Shane knows really well, recently, and what we should be doing to help grow more players out of Canada. And I think the feeling is baseball in Canada’s really, really good. So they there’s a guy named Greg Hamilton, who kind of kind of runs a lot of those programs; Greg particularly is their high performance guy, does a really good job of finding players, identifying talent at early age, does things like get them out of Canada in the winter to go down and play in the Dominican Republic to get more games, to get better games. And so you’re seeing more Canadian players come through. I think having a good Canadian team in the World Baseball Classic would greatly enhance it. So I don’t know if that answered your question, but it is absolutely something. It’s a unique market. We do a lot of stuff there, we do have a strong licensing business up there, but we were very respectful obviously of the Blue Jays because they’re one of our shareholders, as we say.
Shane:
The Canadian development you alluded to, they are really good and that I think that that WBC team is going to continue to get stronger because they are literally the model that a lot of other countries around the world are trying to emulate, as far as how they produce ballplayers in a country where baseball is not the primary sport. So Canada’s looking strong from a talent perspective.
Jim:
But you know, the World Baseball Classic is kind of, in a way, a bit of a crapshoot. You can’t tell me the US team in 2017 was way better than the teams that didn’t win in the three previous ones. It’s a bit of a crapshoot, hopefully, they’ll get some things breaking their way and they’ll miss a few pitches that they should miss and they’ll be able to advance.
Toshiki:
Hi, Shane, how are you? It’s great to see you. I have more of a business side question. What were some of the struggles that you have to overcome when trying to partner with Japanese companies? I’m saying this because I’m currently interning for Monumental Sports, which is the parent company of Washington Wizards, specifically helping them with global partnerships to Japanese market, so if you could give me some of your insights, that’d be great.
Jim:
Yeah, absolutely. I say this with nothing but respect, but I think one of the biggest challenges with getting anything done in Japan is the risk aversion. In Japan, the penalty for taking a risk and being wrong, is sometimes higher than the reward for taking a risk and being right; that was really the case in 2003. It’s really changed a lot, I’d say recently, and it’s because of people that you know with Rakuten, they understand that, and they understand that they’re trying to get their employees to take more risks. When you go to the Rakuten office, it’s completely different. It’s like you’re not in Japan, everybody speaks English, and it’s a very different environment. But generally, I think that’s still a lot of the case. And so what I found is when you went in, to try to get somebody to buy your product, and we were selling sponsorship rights, that middle manager was really hard, because if you didn’t get the right person, they didn’t want to take this fairly expensive, international property to their bosses and say, “If I’m wrong about this, the boss doesn’t like it, this isn’t gonna work.” So one of the things we did then was to just circumvent those guys, and I learned this from some friends at Manchester United. It’s cheap, go on in publicity, but it worked. I think we started it with Ohtani, it might have been Darvish, but what we did is just found the CEOs for these different companies we wanted to talk to, we send them a Rangers jersey with their name on the back, and some other really nice gifts, a card from me and it just said, “Hey, we’d love to talk to you about a relationship.” So now, that guy who’s the big guy who can do anything, can call that middle manager and say, “take a meeting with this gaijin guy.” And then it worked. So we’re able to get some of that done. But it took me a while to understand that, and that’s on top of the stuff that I know that you know. One of the big things I learned from being there is we’re playing in Japan’s baseball field, not in the US baseball field. So I need to check my ego at the door, I need to check my American Way at the door. “We’re Major League Baseball, don’t you know who we are?” I can’t do that. It’s disrespectful about Japanese baseball, but it’s also disrespectful of Japanese culture. Right? So I’ve never expected anybody that I’ve ever worked with in Japan to come in and say, “Well, look at me. I’m Samurai Japan.” It’s just so foreign. Right. And I’ve seen a lot of companies try to be the big bolsters, “hey, we’re gonna do this big wild thing, have a big party and have everyone there” and Japan, it’s just much more subtle than that. I know you know all that stuff better than I do, but I would say that would be the one kind of trick we learned, which really helped us a lot to get to the CEO level with a nice gift.
Shane:
Everyone on this call views baseball as a global game, and it seems like there’s more and more events and interests that are all moving towards showing the rest of the world that it is a global game. So I’m glad that you are the guy that’s helping make it happen, ‘cause I know you’re capable of great things and you love it just as much as we all do.
Jim:
It’s the best, right? I mean, Bob talking about going and seeing baseball around the world and places other than Japan. I’m sure a lot of you guys have been able to do that. It’s awesome. I’ll leave you with this story. So I was really, really lucky. I’ve been spending over the past seven years, a lot of time in India. And a couple years ago, I went and this is the India promise, right? So I get there, and there’s a guy named Anoop Kumar, in Delhi that we’ve been supporting for years in bats and balls and all that stuff, he runs a really nice baseball program. And so I come and it’s Diwali, so it’s the Festival of Lights. And I kind of came near dusk, so things are starting to get dark. But he’s got just the coolest thing in the world, he has one of his baseball fields lit up, the base paths are lit up with candles, and the mound is with candles and stuff. I took pictures of it. I was ready to start crying, It was so cool. And he has one poorly lit field, and I walk over that field, and I go “Who are these guys?” And he goes “They’re 13, 14 year old kids, brand new to baseball, never played before.” And it was terribly unorganized, there were too many people on each line, they were doing double play drills, and second baseman’s going over, touching the bag with this wrong foot. But every one of those guys turned and threw a frickin’ laser beam to first base, because they’ve been throwing a ball their entire life. And that’s the promise of India; there are few games in the world where you throw, bat, and catch, it’s baseball, softball and cricket and that’s it. Maybe you get handball or tennis where you’re up here (holds hand above head)– we’ve recruited people. Shane, I don’t know if you know about this, we took (MLB scout) Bob Fontaine and went to a national handball training center in China because handballers throw up here, right (raises hand)? Everything else in sports around the world is below the waist. So you see things like that on a night like that, when you see this really special thing, and the sights and smells of India, and then you see these 13 year old kids who can throw laser beams and you’re like “this is gonna work. We’re gonna, we’re gonna get this done.”
Shane:
I played water polo growing up and he said he always wanted to turn a water polo player into a pitcher, just like handball, it’s the same motion.
Jim:
He told me about your water polo. And I said, “Well, how can they teach the horses to swim?”
Shane:
Jim, thanks so much for coming on. Great seeing you Jim.
Jim:
Thanks, everybody!
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