9/11/08 – Hanshin (Away)

Hear, hear!

WWE is a great analogy – rowdy, obnoxious, occasionally violent crowds dressed up in relentlessly tacky outfits and oozing ignorance and inexplicable smarm. I figure Yomiuri deserve their boring drone-swarm of a fan base, but the Hanshin case is a shame – historical stadium, otherwise normal team, but a fan base responsible for just about every single unfortunate incident at ballgames since the 1970s – and often without any real reason for it.

Hanshin fans are everywhere and I’ve noticed that, much like Yomiuri fans, they are incapable of talking about baseball past naming their club’s celeb du jour. On top of that, you know it’s only a matter of time before you get some kind of non sequitir, out of left field obnoxious behavior.

Other fan: “Hey, Hanshin fan, your guys had a rough night.”
Hanshin-boy: “Wooo! Fujikawa! Best hitter ever!”
OF: “Uuuuhhmmm. . . What?”
HB: “Woo!” (Proceeds to do doughnuts on the local middle school field in his pimped-out minivan with his poor sleeping kids in the back, thus, apparently “winning” the conversation.)

The sad thing is I’m only slightly exaggerating.

I don’t know, I think that Yakult would bail the team out no matter what the cost. The team loses tons of cash every year despite the extra fans that show up for 25% (15 out of the 60) of the scheduled home games at Jingu.

Actually, I need to qualify that. Yomiuri fans really only show up for weekend series, so we can call that 12 of the 60 scheduled home games at Jingu. Hanshin fans, it goes without saying, show up en masse for any game as long as the team is not in fifth or sixth place.

Anyway, back to my original point: bailing the team out for millions of dollars every year is a bargain when considering how much extra would have to be spent on prime kanto-region advertising if Yakult did not own the team.

Even though the parent company might bail the team out it wouldn’t do for ever without these games.

Actually, Christopher, and this is quite sad, but they almost certainly would.

Hanshin has only very recently started drawing extra supporters to Jingu. Don’t give them too much credit. Let us not forget that the team was absolutely dismal from the Bass era until about 2003. Those left field stands were all but bare for years. The Hoshino-Okada era has brought on several consecutive top three finishes and swarms of fair-weather Hanshin supporters, so kudos for the success that they’ve enjoyed during the past few years. But their contribution to Yakult coffers over the years has been marginal.

If Yomiuri/Hanshin games are so integral to a team’s financial stability, then how do the Pacific League teams survive?

So that leaves Yomiuri. But Yomiuri fans just don’t show up for games. Weekend Yomiuri-sen crowds are rarely impressive at Jingu. But they still deserve more of the credit than Hanshin in terms of taking a little bit of the edge off of the deficit incurred by the Yakult front office every season (even in seasons when they win). Due to the decades-old Yomiuri brainwashing regime, they’ve managed to help us out a bit over the years. But the fans only really show up when the team is in first, and that hasn’t been incredibly often over the past 25 years. The crowds for last weekend’s series at Jingu were actually pretty weak.

So let’s recalibrate this just a bit. Yomiuri and Hanshin’s existence have very little impact on Yakult’s viability. Yakult’s management doesn’t give a damn about the business of baseball and it doesn’t appear that they ever will. I bet that if you asked the “owner” of the team (a position that gets rotated every couple years) who his favorite players on the team now are, his first answer would be Furuta. Then, after a bit of thought, he might come up with the names Miyamoto and Aoki. After that, I’d wager that he doesn’t know any other names.

There are plenty of people calling for increased investment in the club to nurture its own talent and produce teams that can have a shot year-in and year-out. But the success of the team simply doesn’t concern the front office. They simply accept the status quo, and the recent resurgence of Hanshin has been a nice excuse for them to delay any efforts to actually create a team/business that makes money.

“Hey, look! The team lost less than 30 million dollars this year! Drinks all around!”

Most other teams in the Central are guilty of the same idiocy.

To say that Yakult is able to survive because of the existence of teams such as Hanshin and Yomiuri is difficult to justify at best. Yakult as a company is not in the business of creating a winning baseball team. They’re in the business of selling yogurt. The Tokyo Swallows are a small, but important, cog in that commercial wheel. It’s called the marketing division. If that bumper crop of ticket sales wasn’t there for those 10-20 Yomiuri/Hanshin games per year, it’s safe to say that the team would ride the season out much like the Pacific League teams always have. Again, several other teams in the Central League are guilty of the same thing.

But let’s look at your suggestion from another angle. What if Yomiuri and Hanshin switched leagues or somehow just disappeared? Were Hanshin and Yomiuri to vanish tomorrow (god forbid), it would probably be one of the best things that ever happened to the league from a business perspective. Teams would be allowed to make decisions that are in their own best interests, and power would become more evenly distributed. However, the central league teams would likely be slowest to react. The teams in the better division would continue to innovate and restructure, as they’ve quietly been doing for years, and the Central League teams would be forced to play catch-up.

In effect, Yakult would finally be forced to treat the team like a business. That would benefit the team enormously. For starters, had the team been run with business in mind after last season, some extra cash would probably have been invested in Greisinger and Ramirez’s long-term happiness in Swallows uniforms. And on the level of NPB as a whole, the end result would likely be a league with parity and an increased ability to compete with MLB for talent.

So, yes, some extra cash comes in when Yomiuri and Hanshin are around (of course, some of that is then spent on extra people to pick up balloons when the latter is in town), but they do not deserve credit for keeping Yakult on the map.

Christopher Amano-Langtree,

This is what I was disputing:

Remember guys – Hanshin fans and Gomiuri fans are the only reason the Swallows still exist.

But now somehow we’ve wandered all the way over to this:

But the business environment has changed and now the Tigers/Giants games do matter. Surprisingly, Yakult are still in with a chance because the Kanto region is up for grabs. The Giants have not locked in this region and there are still a lot of fans who can be persuaded to support the Swallows. Giants relied too much on television revenue and as this is fading are struggling to find a replacement.

Let me transition back to where this started by saying that I would love nothing more than for Yakult to sell the team to a company or group of investors who will actually treat it like a business and expect the franchise to finish the year in the black. I think that we’re in agreement that the ownership of the team is lousy.

Now, back to your original suggestion. Hanshin and Yomiuri games at Jingu pull in an average of 9,000 more spectators per game than games versus Yokohama, Chunichi and Hiroshima do (this year’s numbers). That’s 9,000 extra men, women and children buying tickets, drinks and food.

Let’s do some generous math here:
if all 9,000 of those spectators purchase the most expensive seats available in the area where they want to sit, then that works out to about 780 million yen over the course of the season. To push the final tally up we’ll say only 3,000 additional fans sit in the outfield, but that all of them buy 1,900 yen reserved seat tickets (the most expensive available in the outfield). The other 6,000 pay the maximum 4,500 yen for their seats (S-section seats). 780 million yen.

And 780 million is being very generous. Those 4,500 yen seats are all in the S-section which means that they are mostly season ticket seats which are mostly held by companies that give them out to their employees. Yakult makes no extra money on ticket sales when those season ticket seats fill up. Realistically, the people in S-section seats pay nothing (unless they bought their ticket at one of those little ticket shop holes-in-the-wall in Shinjuku), and the other half in the infield seat occupants pay between 3,100 and 3,900 yen.

In addition, a large number of surplus fans in the outfield sections are members of the fan club, so they pay only 1,000 yen for their seats. By ignoring those mitigating factors, I’ve intentionally overestimated the number to a point where most observers (except me) would say that it’s a fair starting point for analysis.

Because that number is so inflated, we can safely say that it includes the revenue gleaned from beverage and food sales (team merchandising is outsourced, so shirt sales don’t really factor in here).

Anyway, 780 million yen. That’s less than 7.5 million dollars over the course of an entire season that can be attributed to those extra fans that show up for Yomiuri and Hanshin games!

As a percentage of total team operating revenue, that’s pretty small. And when set against Yakult’s capitalization as an organization, it’s nothing more than negligible.

Are the bean counters happy to welcome the recent increased influx of Hanshin fans to Jingu a few times every month during the summer? I’m sure they are. Hanshin fans are responsible for nearly half of that extra 7.5 million that comes in (average attendance at Hanshin games is just shy of 23,000 people; Yomiuri games fetch nearly 25,000).

But the team would not go under if those games were played against other teams instead, and that 7.5 million dollar windfall vanished. It’s pretty easy to see how the Pacific League teams can survive without Yomiuri and Hanshin. And let us not forget that 2008 is exceptional in that both Yomiuri and Hanshin are playing well and battling it out for the pennant. Those extra bums in seats helped push this year’s figure up higher than it normally is.

The powers-that-be have written the team off as an advertising expense since the mid-70’s; they stopped caring about the success of the team, and by extension the franchise’s bottom line, a long time ago. The only thing they care about is that those dark blue away uniforms have “Yakult” emblazoned across the chest in red.

The team losing a large amount of money every year is expected, and as the team is classified as part of Yakult’s “other” business activities (along with the new “Yakult Beautiens” cosmetic product line, I’m proud to report), president Sumiya Hori is content with the unfortunate and long-standing view that owning a baseball team that consistently runs in the red is a lot cheaper than more conventional and modern forms of advertising.

In short, the importance of those games has been severely and repeatedly overstated. No matter how much I would love for Yakult to sell the team (preferably to me), the loss of those fans would not affect such a change. Hanshin and Yomiuri fans can not be credited with keeping the Yakult yogurt boat afloat.

Actually the economics are different. You haven’t factored in the fixed costs and this is the main thing that extra fans defray. Remove the extra fans and these still have to be paid. Kintetsu dropped 4 billion yen on the costs of Osaka Dome per year before calling it a day. This is without including any other costs. They could not bring in the extra fans and this should serve as a warning to those who believe that Tigers and Giants fans aren’t essential to the survival of the other clubs. You also haven’t factored in TV costs – Tigers and Giants games still bring in a premium and allow the clubs to charge more. A Swallows/BayStars game will not bring in as much revenue as a Tigers/Swallows game.

The illusion that Yomiuri are the most popular team in Japan also needs to be corrected. This isn’t quite the situation anymore. Yomiuri’s active fans are outnumbered by active Tigers fans but are still reasonably active. However, Yomiuri have relied on their TV income to make a profit. This is falling and they haven’t yet come up with a solution. This is why Yakult have a chance. I mentioned that Yakult do need the Tigers and Giants which still holds but this situation doesn’t need to continue. Yakult can take control of their own destiny and have a window of opportunity. But they need to act now. The reason Yomiuri are fading is that TV income is a country wide solution not a regional one and the indications are that the Japanese market is fragmenting and becoming more regional. Tigers were the first to realise this and have locked the Kansai region up very nicely. Rakuten are also realizing this and have a very nice regional identity developing. Yakult have only got as far as changing their name but need to do more.

Most of Tigers income comes from merchandising and TV not ticket sales. This is where a club will make money. Tigers by their very location are able to tap two markets Osaka and Kobe. They are also able to merchandise in almost all the major cities of Japan – there are viable Tigers goods shops in each one. This is not the case with the Giants who had difficulty maintaining a small kiosk in Tokyo Station. Likewise, Seibu’s shop in Omote Sando was a failure. This demonstrates the market exists. One musn’t be lured by past experiences – Kintetsu should remind everyone that companies are not prepared to continuously pour money down the drain for ever. Seibu tried to sell the team to defray costs and the Inter-league was only introduced to help the failing Pacific League. Yakult does need the Hanshin and Yomiuri fans and the brand identity will only go so far. Just consider this – after they brought Buffaloes Orix’s brand recognition went up. But beyond the name? What does Orix do and where does it’s money come from (I do know)?

The problem of the Tigers fans behaviour is a red herring. All teams have problem fans – most recently Chunichi. Look at the trouble that they have had recently. I don’t know what Swallows have been doing but I hope they have made strides to elimnate their Yakuza linked groups.

Onto Orix – they own the concession for Tokyo Disneyland and that is where the majority of their income comes from. Your other comments just prove my point – Daiei have to get rid of the baseball club, Kintetsu have to get rid of the baseball club – these are because they weren’t contributors but drains on resources. Seibu tried to get rid of the baseball club because it was a drain on resources but wanted to retain the Tokorozawa ground. There was considerable interest but no one would take the club on with the handicap of the ground. If Yakult run into trouble the baseball will have to go because it’s a drain on resources – it doesn’t add value. Drinks – it’s all very well but an average new drink’s life in Japan is 6 months. Yakult have to keep innovating and they are competing against some very heavy competitors and the advertisments have to be specific. The competition also don’t have the cost of a baseball team wearing them down.

As baseball changes – teams have to add value. The old model clings on but becomes more and more irrelevant. Swallows management have had to introduce salary caps as well – they didn’t pay Ramirez what he was worth. Yomiuri made good moves in picking up Ramirez and Greisinger but their fans are moving away. Baseball in Japan is becoming more regional. Tigers have Kansai locked up and this is where you will see most activity. Yomiuri haven’t done much to lock up Kanto and this is why Swallows still have a chance but they need to do much more.

My point wasn’t that the Swallows would fold without the revenue provided by Tigers it was that the Swallows need the revenue provided by both the Tigers and Giants fans. Remember we pay higher prices for our tickets than other fans. If you take away these fans the chance of Yakult giving up the team increases – the Pacific League examples should provide clear evidence of why this might happen. The principle that the Swallows need to realise – like all the minor teams – is that you have to spend money to make money. They don’t spend nearly enough and as a result are not successful.

Tigers are a profitable enterprise because of the merchandising and the fact that they are part of an integrated group. They lock in their market effectively but they recognise that it is a regional market. This is the way to success and the club is a net contributor to the group. They also exploit Osaka people who move to Tokyo for work. Most of these stay Tiges fans and in fact there are about 20 flourishing Tigers bars in Tokyo. This is another indication of the strength of the brand. A good brand adds value to a company and generates extra income.

No actually the comments about Hanshin fans merely display your prejudices. Do not mistake these for facts. Your comments may in fact be out of date and you need to examine them very carefully.

Recently – Chunichi banned two cheering clubs because of possible Yakuza links. The rest of the cheering clubs then refused to use instruments when they cheered the Dragons. This affected the Dragons cheering sections throughout the season. Tigers worked hard to ban the Yakuza linked cheering clubs and in fact rewrote their cheering songs because of certain claims.

Certainly there are Hanshin fans who qualify as idiots and whose behaviour is not good but most Hanshin fans display a passion for the team that is healthy. There are also Yakult fans or Giants fans or any other kind of fans who are also idiots. Rather than rant and display your ignorance you should accept that others are different and get over your prejudices. You have yet to accept that Hanshin fans are different and that they show their support in different ways.

Personally, I have no problems with the fans of any team – they have made a choice and they support their team. What I do have problems with is fans (including Hanshin fans) who do get violent or unpleasant. However,I acknowledge that these people are not representative of most of the fans of any team. Fans are different and are a cross section of humanity and you would do well to learn to accept the difference.

I sincerely do not think this is an issue of prejudice.

The Swallows had a similar problem to Chunichi’s a couple of years back. Yakuza-linked groups were barred and the results have been mixed – while there is certainly a more relaxed, friendly atmosphere at Swallows’ games these days, the cheering sections are much less vigorous than they once were and, god bless the boys who try, our team has probably the weakest trumpets in NPB.

I, and I think I can speak for the other guys here and probably a large section of CL fans, have absolutely no problem with people supporting the Tigers. The Tigers are a team with a history and a passion that most other supporters envy. Koshien is a great place, the Tigers are a good team (at least this year), with players who are no different from players on any other team save the Giants. I sincerely hope the Hanshin Tigers continue to flourish and draw fans to home and away games for many, many years to come.

Likewise, I begrudge no one their love of the Tigers. I am perfectly willing to acknowledge that the majority of Tigers fans are normal, reasonable people who like their team. I have no problem with that. Nor do I have any problem with people being loud or decking themselves out in all kinds of Tigers gear. Quite the contrary, I respect and admire the club’s ability to nurture a devoted fan base across the country.

What bothers me, and I think other baseball fans, is that for the past seven years (the admittedly short time I’ve been attending NPB games), I have never seen an incidence of violence or out of line behavior other than those instigated by Hanshin fans. And I have never been to a Hanshin game where such an incident did not occur.

Now, this could be a flight of fancy, but the folks at Jingu, the Tokyo Dome, and Yokohama Stadium seem to agree, as all of those places call in highly visible police presences when the Tigers are in town.

As far back as the ’50s, the groundbreaking Wally Yonamine talked about Hanshin fans throwing “big rocks” at him in the outfield. Don Blasingame had fans, of his own Tigers, try to overturn his taxi when they felt he was snubbing a recent Koshien high school star in favor of a foreigner. In the late 1980s, according to Robert Whiting and a former Swallows pitcher named Koizumi, Koshien had to install barbed wire and taller fences in front of the bleachers to keep Tigers fans from assaulting or throwing things at, primarily, their own players.

It is true that every team has a few jerks in the crowd. Come by Jingu and I think I could point ours out to you. Come to a Swallows away game anywhere other than the Tokyo Dome and the assholes on our own side are easy to see. We have them, the BayStars have them, the Carp have them, the Giants have them, the Dragons certainly have them – I’ve seen them all.

The problem, though, is the frequency with and extremity to which Hanshin fans exhibit unacceptable behavior.

I, like you (I’m assuming) have no fondness for the Giants, but I can exchange good-natured ribbing and jibes with them and certainly have no trepidation in mingling with them. This cannot be said for the Hanshin crowd.

To be fair, I know many Hanshin fans (there are many of you) and they are all decent folks. For some reason, though, there is a problem in the Hanshin crowd at games. They have a current near-monopoly on ballpark violence in NPB and the attitude seems to be that that is laudable.

If, by “show their support in different ways” you mean adorning themselves with more merchandise than the supporters of other teams, I not only respet, but endorse that.

But you and I both know that’s not what we’re talking about.

The issue here is the consistent, noticeable levels of asocial (I won’t go so far as to say “antisocial”), unpleasant, boorish, intimidating, and, yes, sometimes violent and thuggish behavior displayed by some supporters of the Hanshin Tigers and the disappointing fact that, rather than acknowledge and attempt to correct this, many otherwise decent Hanshin fans get defensive and support it.

I have absolutely no prejudice concerning baseball teams. My view of the Hanshin crowd is anything but prejudiced. It stems from experience and seeing the crowd. Call it judgemental, that I will accept, but prejudiced it is not.

Hiroshima tackled their problem. Tokyo and Chunichi have tackled theirs. Hanshin seems proud of the problem it has.

Is that unfair? Is it ignorant? If I have been unfair, prejudicial, or ignorant in my assessment of the Tigers crowd, the easy way to assess that would be to observe the behavior of said crowd, which I have done many times this season alone and will do a few times again.

If and when I am shown to be wrong, I will embrace that moment, as it will mean a large and vibrant fan community has shed an unsavory element.

Until that moment, I stand by every word I have written above.

All of that said, I do sincerely appreciate your willingness to hash all of this out with us. We’re glad to have a Hanshin fan’s perspective and are glad to see that there are bright, reasonable, well-intentioned folks in that crowd. Please don’t think we hate any and all Hanshin fans. We don’t. You guys love your team, we love ours. You come out to games, and we respect that. Ultimately, we’re all on the same team here. I just wish our team could get by without so much acrimony.

And tell all of your black-and-yellow compatriots that we’re happy to have them at Jingu, we like going to Koshien, and we hope it continues for the rest of our lives.

We could do without the boorishness, though.

Back to the folding thing. If you’re paying higher prices than other fans at Jingu, get your tickets from the ticket booths, where are the prices are the same for both sides, for every game. I’ve not seen an instance of Jingu doing the “special” pricing thing that Yokohama Stadium does. If that is happening at Jingu, though, let us know – we’ll write about it on this blog and say that it’s wrong.

Aren’t gaia seats 1,500 and 1,900 (reserved) for all games? I thought it was only the seats in sections A and B (infield) that had their prices bumped for Hanshin and Yomiuri matches.

Normally those seats cost 3,600 (A) and 2,600 yen (B), but fans (Swallows fans included) pay more for Hanshin and Yomiuri games (3,900 and 3,100 yen, respectively). They made us pay more for a game at Yokohama back during golden week (left-field seats)…

How much are they making you pay for left-field seats at Jingu?

Also, I didn’t know that there was a couple’s concession in the outfield section at Jingu. How much does that cost?

It’s almost like a cult, where all Kansai’s great unwashed and inbred come to wear Tiger’s ears and hold signs like it’s WWE. Kind of Jonestownish in a way (minus the kool aid of course…….).

Hanshin fans are everywhere and I’ve noticed that, much like Yomiuri fans, they are incapable of talking about baseball past naming their club’s celeb du jour. On top of that, you know it’s only a matter of time before you get some kind of non sequitir, out of left field obnoxious behavior.

I took the above two unrestricted generalisations from posts 1 and 2. There are others.

I don’t actually sit in the Gaia (I did last year but have forgotten the prices I paid) so I don’t know how much they cost but I’m sure you’re right. I tend to sit in the right side (often with Swallows friends) but my point is that we pay more for the Hanshin and Yomiuri games. Couple concessions are half the price of ordinary tickets wherever you sit.

I’ve sat in it a lot so I am very familiar with the people in the Tigers Gaia. I used to enjoy the lemon sours they served up. However, as I have friends who are Swallows fans nowadays I am sitting with them on the Swallows side. There are still plenty of Tigers fans there as well.

Onto Orix – they own the concession for Tokyo Disneyland and that is where the majority of their income comes from.

That’s absolutely impossible. Have a look at their most recent annual report: http://www.orix.co.jp/grp/content/080509_kessanJ.pdf