The Japan Sports Agency advocates sports from the perspectives of "Doing, Seeing, and Supporting. Let us analyze Japanese sports in comparison with the world from these three perspectives.
Looking at the 2019 world professional league sales figures before COVID, it is said that Japan's professional leagues have been growing steadily in recent years, but when compared on a global scale, baseball in the US and Japan has about six times the sales of the MBL, and soccer in Europe and Japan has about nine times the sales of the Premier League. Furthermore, in the U.S., soccer, a minor sport, generates almost the same amount of sales as Japan.
One of the main reasons for this difference is that the world is more aware of sports as "content" and "entertainment". The broadcasting rights revenues from the NFL and NFL TV stations enable them to generate sales from countries around the world and contribute significantly to overall sales.
1. NFL American football / U.S.A. 1,554.0 billion yen
2. Major League Baseball (MLB) Baseball/U.S. 1,143.3 billion yen
3. NBA Basketball/USA 821.4 billion yen
4. Premier League Soccer / England: 674.556 billion yen
5. NHL Ice Hockey/USA 491.73 billion yen
6. La Liga Soccer/Spain 392.832 billion yen
7. Bundesliga Soccer/Germany 381.052 billion yen
8. Serie A Soccer/Italy 274.908 billion yen
9. 4. UEFA Champions League Soccer/International: 261,387 million yen
10. Formula 1 (F1) Motor Sports/International 202,797 million yen
11. Ligue-Anne Football/France 209.808 billion yen
---Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) Baseball/Japan 180 billion yen
---J1 League Soccer/Japan 73.479 billion yen
---Major League Soccer(MLS) Soccer/USA. 71.48 billion
In terms of attendance, Japanese sports are far behind their foreign counterparts, with the Yomiuri Giants in 60th place, the Hanshin Tigers in 62nd place, and SoftBank Fukuoka in 79th place.
By visiting an actual venue or stadium, you can watch a live game unfold in front of your eyes, which makes the event more exciting and entertaining than a TV game.
1. Dallas Cowboys (NFL): 91,619 people (732,958 people / 8 games)
2. Borussia Dortmund (Bundesliga) 88,020 (1,373,940/17 games)
3. New York Jets (NFL) 77,982 (623,856 / 8 games)
4. Green Bay Packers (NFL) 77,834 (622,677 / 8 games)
5. New York Giants (NFL) 76,940 (615,525 / 8 games)
6. Denver Broncos (NFL) 76,446 (611,571 / 8 games)
7. Kansas City Chiefs (NFL) 75,972 (607,780 / 8 games)
8. Barcelona (La Liga) 75,208 (1,428,956 / 19 games)
9. Bayern Munich (Bundesliga) 75,000 (1,275,000 / 17 games)
10. Manchester United (Premier League) 74,498 (1,415,471/19 games)
60. Yomiuri Giants (Professional Baseball) 41,699 (3,002,347/72 games)
62. Hanshin Tigers (professional baseball) 48,831 (2,898,976/71 games)
79. Fukuoka Softbank Hawks (Nippon Professional Baseball) 36,149 (2,566,554/71 games)
Even if we take "watching" as just one example, there is such a wide gap between Japanese and world class sports.
In order to fill this gap, We would like to explore what is needed to raise the value of sports in Asia, in order to make Japanese sports known overseas.
We feel that sports are still developing in Asian countries and that there is still a lot of opportunity, because of these figures. We would like to realize sporting events, even if they are small, mainly in Asia.