気ままなリライト３３

プロ野球、コロナの時代の球団経営　球場有無で打撃に差（写真=共同）

Two-year-long restrictions on public gatherings in ballparks have given Japanese ball clubs a chance to shed light on how vulnerable club management is without financial support from their parent companies, what each club should do to improve its financial health on its own and how important it is to strengthen the bond between baseball fans and their favorite teams. Without marketable pay-per-view TV programs for baseball fans, a drop in the number of baseball fans visiting ballparks has hit ball clubs’ finance directly. Without being under the parent company’s umbrella, most ball clubs couldn’t have kept their ballplayers’ salaries intact.
 
How badly each ball club has suffered a financial loss depended on whether or not the club owned its home stadium for games. The pandemic scare-triggered restrictions on in-person attendance changed the stadium’s ownership from an asset into a liability. The marketing efforts to increase sales by cashing in on the ownership backfired. The ball clubs owning their stadiums were hit harder than the ball clubs without their stadium’s ownership as the stadium’s running cost outweighed the revenues from concessions in and around the stadium where many shops and restaurants closed. Softbank with its stadium’s ownership finished 8 billion yen in the red in 2021, from 0.5 billion yen in the black in 2019, with a decline in sales from 32.4 billion yen in 2019 to 23 billion yen in 2020 and 2021 each. Being a stadium-boarder saved Yakult Swallows and Nippon Ham Fighters from suffering serious damage to their club finance.
 
All ball clubs realized how financially powerless they were when they were faced with the challenge of protecting their ballplayers’ lives from the financial turmoil in the baseball business. Most clubs had to rely on their parent companies as a financial lifeline not to spoil their ballplayers’ salaries. Among the parent companies evaluating their ball clubs’ value highly as one of the marketing tools through baseball events and teams were Softbank and Rakuten. Softbank doubled down on the lifeline for its club with a cash injection of 32.7 billion yen in 2021, a double increase year-on-year. Rakuten pumped up its club’s pocketbook enough to pay the ballplayers’ salaries, turning the balance sheet from the red into the black in the end. The average ballplayer’s salary was up to 43.12 million yen in 2021, reaching a record high. Softbank stood on top for the third year in a row, marking 70 million yen.
 
The lesson ball clubs have learned from the past two-year experience is making them put the management focused on regional markets before that focused on national markets for the clubs’ survival. Various marketing plans are being drawn up to put stress on local fans buying tickets to go to games rather than those watching on TV. Rakuten’s president says, “Ballplayers’ commitment to showing their amazing play is more likely to be impressed as a live performance. Touching the hearts of in-person attendance is the key to developing local fans’ loyalty to their favorite teams. That’s why
a two-year break hasn’t dampened fans’ enthusiasm about relishing ball games in person. This season’s ballpark attendance bounced back to nearly 80 % of a record high attendance in 2019.”