🧢 Welcome to the Shohei Ohtani Effect

Finally, we can sit down and enjoy because it’s “Shotime”!

Folks, it’s been a long time coming. To be even more accurate, it’s been 6 long years since we have seen the next greatest baseball superstar, Shohei Ohtani, step into the batters box in October and enjoy the benefits of playoff baseball. That’s right, after all the controversy swirling around the Japanese star prior to the season starting, he finally has his wish…the opportunity to compete for the National League Pennant and more importantly, a World Series Championship.

It wasn’t always easy for Ohtani. He was selected by the little step-brother in LA, the Los Angeles Angels, and was essentially stuck in purgatory never having made it to the postseason. Until this past offseason when he signed a record-breaking 10-year, $700M contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers. And what did the Dodgers get in return? Oh you know, just one of the most historic seasons the MLB has ever seen as he was the sport’s first player with 50 home runs and 50 stolen bases in a season (we’re not worthy Shohei!). While all of that is good and glamorous, let’s take some time to review the type of impact Ohtani has actually had on the game of baseball, the Dodgers, and the greater-Los Angeles area.

Let’s get after it…

What are some of the ways the MLB and Dodgers are monetizing Ohtani’s star power?

• Just one year into his 10-year contract with the Dodgers, a recent study estimates that Ohtani’s LA arrival has created an economic impact of $594M.

  • To give you an idea, Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour is estimated to have brought about $230M to Japan over four days.

• Viewership. MLB, Fox, and TNT collectively posted a 41% boost in viewership across the initial two days of the Division Series on Saturday and Sunday.

  • Fox Sports averaged 3.6M viewers for its first four National League Division Series games. That’s the highest such mark through the second day of play in this playoff round since the network’s FS1 channel began showing postseason baseball in 2014.

  • TNT, meanwhile, generated an average of 2.6 million viewers for its American League Division Series coverage Saturday, a pair of Game 1s that produced a 21% increase compared to the start of the round last year.

  • The Division Series also follows a wild-card round that produced a 25% viewership increase from last year, and the best totals since that round of the postseason began in 2022

• Attendance. The Dodgers had 3.9M fans attend home games this regular season.

  • That’s ~100K more fans than last year, with the Dodgers having ~630K more fans at their games than MLB’s second highest-drawing team, the New York Yankees at 3.3M.

  • The Dodgers don’t get to keep all of this money (because MLB’s revenue-sharing program requires them to contribute 48% of local revenues to a shared fund), but that doesn’t stop them from keeping the remaining 52%.

  • This figure also doesn’t include parking and concessions, which increases it even more in year one.

• Merchandise. Ohtani led all MLB players in jersey sales for the second straight year. Dodgers players also accounted for 20% of MLB's top 20 jersey sales, the highest proportion of any MLB team.

  • Revenue-sharing covenants require the money from jersey sales to be shared amongst several parties, including MLB’s other 29 teams and the MLB players association.

  • Here’s the kicker, the Dodgers keep a larger share of the money when jerseys are sold through their own retailer (i.e., a stadium shop)…so, if attendance increases year over year and the Dodgers lead the MLB in attendance + the Dodgers make up ~20% of the top 20 jersey sales, it’s easy to come to the conclusion that they ranked first in merchandise sales this year.

• Sponsorships. One of the biggest benefits of having a foreign superstar is the fact that their country can end up flourishing due to hometown sponsorships. And if the country flourishes, so can the professional team…

  • The Dodgers had 12 new Japanese sponsors this season, including All Nippon Airways, Daiso, Toyo Tires, and Yakult.

  • The Dodgers actually sold out of ad inventory so fast that Japanese companies started…

    • 1) buying ad space in other MLB stadiums where the Dodgers played away games.

    • 2) purchasing TV-visible ads during Dodgers away games. This helped the Dodgers create more new revenue than any other U.S. professional sports team this year, estimated at $30M or more.

• Tourism. It’s easy to wonder why this didn’t occur when Ohtani played for the Angels. The simple answer? The Dodgers are a massive brand, the Angels are not.

  • It’s why it was must-see baseball for tourists from all states and countries to come watch Ohtani and the Dodgers dominate.

  • A Japanese travel agency told CNN that it was booking up to 200 clients from Japan for each Dodgers home game this season, and the LA Tourism Board estimates that 80% to 90% of visitors from Japan stopped by Dodger Stadium at least once during their Los Angeles trips.

  • This increase in tourism had popular LA businesses like the Miyako Hotel and Mr. Ramen saying their foot traffic doubled year over year, and the Omni hotel near Dodger Stadium saw its bookings from Japanese tourists go up +30% this summer from Expedia alone.

We’ll see how far Ohtani can take the Dodgers, especially since this is the first year he’s not pitching as well as hitting. Oh yeah, did we mention he was a Cy Young candidate last year…while also winning 3-straight AL MVPs 😲.

But we can guarantee the MLB will yelp in excitement if the World Series ends up being a Yankees vs. Dodgers matchup. And don’t be surprised if Ohtani leads the charge…not just in statistics, but economic impact as well.

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Quick Hitters

• 🎰 Are RSNs making a comeback? Ehhh not sure about that, but FanDuel is now finalizing a deal to become the title sponsor of the Diamond Sports Group–owned RSNs previously known as Bally Sports. The agreement has been in the works for several months, but DSG updated the U.S. Bankruptcy Court of its efforts to rename the networks Monday. The deal will involve FanDuel acquiring a “single-digit percentage of equity” in a reorganized DSG, with performance-based warrants that would allow for a doubling of that ownership stake. There’s still plenty to figure out when it comes to DSG as it nears a confirmation hearing.

  • As part of recently renegotiated rights deals that include lowered rights fees, DSG said it owes the NBA and the 13 basketball teams it airs $253.1M for the 2024–2025 season, and the NHL and nine of its teams are set to receive nearly $135M.

  • DSG is currently in bankruptcy court and might be forced to liquidate so we’ll see how FanDuel can come in and help out this struggling RSNs.