Spot the Shiroishi

On another note, Dave, have you received your limited-edition, 18K gold-trimmed hand-painted Shiroishi commemorative dinner plates yet?

They’re on order.

I suppose that if he sells goods he’s worth keeping around. Wheel him out for the odd game but otherwise keep him where he can’t do any damage. I’m usually amused by the attempts of other teams to sell merchandise compared to the Tigers. It’s the difference between the absolutely crazy (a radio controlled bus which plays Rokko Oroshi – I have one, a gift I hasten to add) and the boringly mundane. But I must admit that my favourite goods are the Gomiuri Gabbits – there are so many ways to abuse a Gabbit.

I’d put it this way: kicking the crap out of them might be out of order, but there’s no need to show any decency towards those who show none and go a step too far in their boorishness. Which means you probably should be kicking the crap out of Yakult for not sticking up for their own team.

Does Yakult own the buildings that those shops are in?

You’re pretty much preaching to the choir here, Christopher, and as you hinted, the upcoming GW home series versus Hanshin serves to keep Yakult’s collective trap shut. Should be some good crowds out for those games.

However, unless the company owns those sites, then there’s probably nothing they can do about the Tigers shops popping up (correct me if I’m wrong).

One thing that could and should be done, on the other hand, is banning those balloons inside Jingu (??????). The “seventh inning littering dance” shouldn’t be allowed to take place anymore. Indeed, I believe that it’s been banned inside Tokyo Dome.

The fact that it still takes place constitutes damning evidence of the malady you speak of–that the lads running the show have no idea what’s going on.

Fans of the following teams use jettos, Tigers, Golden Eagles, Carp, Giants (at away games), Lions, Hawks and Buffaloes. Grounds that don’t permit jettos are, Tokyo Dome, Yokohama and Nagoya Dome. The new Hiroshima Stadium allows jettos. To the best of my knowledge every other stadium allows them.

I was under the impression that the concessions for the stores were granted by Yakult but I could well be wrong here.

According to Hochi, the Swallows were considering to open a shop at the same place, but the leaders didn’t say yes.
Meanwhile, they were forestalled by the Tigers and bit their lips in vexation.

The shop always reminds me of thick-skinned Tigers’ fans(not all of them are insensitive, of course) and disturbs me, but as long as their business goes well, the shop will be there.

As for the jet balloons, I totally agree with you.

Tigers fans tend to treat Jingu as their Tokyo home, we like the ground a lot. But the Tigers marketing department just happens to be the most clued in baseball marketing unit in Japan. They would have seen and grabbed the opportunity immediately. This is the Osaka style, its a merchant town and the philosophy is that time waits for no one.

Yakult like a lot of teams do not have the awareness and one has to equate them as a bunch of amateur neophytes against a professional machine. Other marketing departments that are reasonable are Rakuten (very sharp) and Hiroshima on occasions. But one thing that the Jingu stadium authorities have realised is that Tigers fans bring income. Swallows fans don’t. Personally, I would like to see a lot more Swallows fans at Jingu (the dominance by Tigers fans disturbs me as well) but until the marketing moves beyond the current levels its not going to happen.

A lot of teams charge more for Yomiuri and Hanshin games, esp. Yomiuri games, as those teams draw more fans. I’ve never been to anything other than a Swallows game at Yokohama Stadium, but I’ve noticed that Yokohama jacks up prices by turning normally unreserved seats into reserved seats for day games or anything else that might draw a crowd.

The Giants do the stupid condom thing on the road? I haven’t seen it at Jingu.

As for the whole marketing at Jingu thing, it seems Yakult is unwilling to spend money to make money and unwilling (on other fronts) to go through the headache of not lubing up for Yomiuri. If a co. is leasing a space to sel Hanshin stuff, that’s free enterprise. To the extent that the Swallows organization has any control over it, they deserve enormous scorn if they even consider permitting the sale of Tigers merch when the Tigers are not playing. Even if sales of Hanshin and Yomiuri merch made enough to keep the Swallows out of the red (which, to be honest, I doubt is even remotely in the realm of the plausible), it would wise, long-term, for Yakult to think about building a better brand image for the team – stop keeping up the image being second-tier.

Things Yakult could start on tomorrow are:
1. Make sure everything in the catalog is for sale at at least one well-stocked shop at the stadium.
2. Start pursuing every available joint-marketing opportunity available. (What would it take to get To-Do, at the Tokyo Dome, to stock more Swallows merch? Would local shops, such as the Mini-Stop, be willing to carry more Swallows merch? Some stuff in omiyage shops?)
3. Set up a pricing plan for international shipping of merch.
4. Open a bricks-and-mortar, year-round shop selling Swallows merch near Jingu.
5. Take a variety of Swallows merch, not just cheesy Tsubakurou crap and the stuff that doesn’t sell in Tokyo, to the home-away-from-home games.
6. Order constantly throughout the season, so the popular items don’t become unavailable halfway through the season.
7. Stop pushing crap that’s not selling. Sell what people are buying, not what you have a lot of. The Swallows are not GM in the ’60s. Push-marketing does not work for them.

For the stadium:
1. Negotiate with Jingu to get Swallows decor up. Retired nos. on the wall, championship pennants up – all of it would be no more permanent or trouble than ads.
2. Bar the balloons outright.
3. Purchase year-round advertising near Jingu with the path to the stadum marked and something like the next home game (during the season) or a countdown to the start of the preseason (in the winter) on them.

4. Open a bricks-and-mortar, year-round shop selling Swallows merch near Jingu.

There’s not enough foot traffic to support one. The stadium is in the middle of nowhere and there’s no one anywhere near there in the off-season.

I think it’s a good idea to open a better shop at the stadium, but something that’s open year-round would have to be in another location just to survive.

Maybe Hanshin brass are counting on offseason foot traffic from other sporting (and non-sporting) events in the Jingu sporting complex, cuz y’know Hanshin fans are everywhere, maybe not even restricted solely to baseball fans

The original merchandise sold in the fan club section by gate 9 is cool, they can’t be found anywhere else.

Garrett,

Yokohama Stadium does not jack up the prices for seats on day games or any games for that matter as ticket prices are the same for all games. But, if they were smart they would. I totally agree with everything here as the Swallows need an image makeover really bad and starting by decorating Jingu Stadium more would be a great start.

Oh and one more thing, I’ll be heading down to Matsuyama next week to catch the Swallows vs. Carp games @ Bochan Stadium. Anything in particular you guys would like to see included in the reports when i post them up? I just thought I’d ask.

Matt, perhaps not “jacking up,” strictly speaking, but they take nonreserved seats, which are normally ?1800, and turn them into reserved seats selling for ?2200, making only standing room unreserved, which means ticket prices are not the same for the same seats at all games although the names might match the prices for all games. I’d call reclassifying seats changing the prices. They’ve done this for at least the past three seasons.

Ken, you’re right about the bricks and mortar shop being near the stadium having insufficient foot traffic, although one needn’t go far to hit much busier streets. “Close” is relative.

Christopher, while a bricks and mortar shop wouldn’t be the best first step, I don’t think insufficiently strong branding is a good reason to not try to improve the brand. You’re right that the Swallows don’t have a strong brand, but nothing will change as long as they keep saying, “Oh well, we’re not popular, so let’s not market to people who aren’t already Swallows fans.”
It won’t be easy, but there’s no inherent reason that the Giants and Hanshin have to remain NPB’s most popular teams.

Here, here, David!

Christopher, I can assure that you will find nary an iota of Hanshin envy in the Tokyo hordes (tiny as they may be.) I doubt you’ll find that sort of envy, of any team, amongst any team’s fanbase. If someone just wanted to follow a team that had lots of people cheering for them, they could cheer for the Giants or Tigers. I expect most fans, Giants and Tigers fans included, come to their teams for a more complex variety of reasons and are generally happy in their decision.

For me, I’m against littering in general, esp. on a large scale. I see the balloon thing as somewhat obnoxious and a disheartening display of waste and pollution – a lot like unnecessary packaging on products or air horns, banging on frying pans, and all of the other inconsiderate things that are done at ball games around the world.

Would I like to see more Tokyo supporters at Jingu? You betcha. Would I take all the ills of the Hanshin crowd along with it? Nope.

where’s the Swallows marketing? Am I missing it?

Nope, there’s none. Save for a few flags on the route from Shinanomachi station to Jingu.

I rather like the balloons – they make a spectacular sight and I suspect that you guys may be against them because they remind you that Tigers can get more fans out than the Swallows. It isn’t a nice thing to be reminded of.

Huh? Wow. Classic.

Japanese teams could always look to MLB for inspiration. MLB merch is sold across the entire globe. Up here in Scandinavia where there is no baseball you see kids wearing NY hats and other MLB teams. Having MLB merchandize is cool here. In Japan too you see Japanese kids wearing MLB things such as hats and jerseys. MLB brand has become so huge that even people who are not interested in basball wants them. It’s become fashion. It would be nice if kids who are not especially interested in baseball would want a Swallows hat for instance or if NPB could for a minute just take their heads out of the sand and see the bigger picture and try to market it on a global scale.

There was/is..(?) an excellent hat store between Harajuku and Shibuya. They sell proper good quality expensive hats of most if not all the MLB teams but they also sold Japan’s national team hats and also Baystars and Swallows hats. I also noticed quite a few kids about 2 years ago, mostly hiphop kids wearing Yokohama Baystars hats. In the front you had the regular logo and on the back it says Yokohama. Seemed like a Japanese hiphop thing. If kids think it is cool to wear the Baystars hats or Swallows for that matter and the team can make some money. Great.

There is a lot of envy from the Yakult fans towards the Tigers fans which to some extent is justified.

Huh? I don’t know which Tokyo fans you’re talking about, but I’m pretty sure that they don’t frequent this site.

If you replaced the word “envy” above with dislike or disgust, then you’d be much closer to reality with regard to how Tokyo fans feel about the visiting Hanshin crowds.

To comment on the environmental waste of the balloons. We go along in the evening to watch a non essential activity which consumes enormous amounts of electricity through floodlights, sound systems and scoreboards and we moan about a few thousand balloons whch are collected along with all the other waste. They don’t use electricity to inflate the balloons.

Right.

This isn’t really worth getting into, but the general point we’re making is that team traditions, ornamentation and routines that add to the waste every night should be banned.

I’m not a big fan of those plastic banger things that many people buy, but at least they can be reused for several games (if not seasons). And that’s the key here: all that plastic that goes into making those obnoxious things can generally withstand the wear and tear of multiple uses.

Now turning back to the balloons–if anyone in the Hanshin section of the stadium is able to track down their balloon and reuse it, then hey, they’ve met the above criteria. But that’s generally not the way that it works over there, right?

So while the very act of coming to the game is in itself wasteful because of all the resources that go into providing the infrastructure for the game, we are arguing that the balloon thing is too much. The same would be true if Tokyo fans bought and discarded miniature blowup penguins swallows on a nightly basis, or if they went through an umbrella each evening. Such practices would be subject to the same ban.

And now we can pull this back around to where this discussion began. You were lecturing us before on the relative merits of the Hanshin marketing machine and how the Yakult people aren’t doing enough to keep other teams from encroaching on the Swallows’ territory.

One way of pushing back (as suggested earlier) would be to ban wasteful practices by visiting groups of fans. The “7th inning littering dance” definitely qualifies for such treatment.

The silver-lining here is that all the saliva from those balloons is getting sprayed right back on top of the people that released them.

That thought makes me smile every time a flock of those colorful condoms flies into the air.

Gentlemen all these replies reek of envy and might one say malice. Are all Tigers fans like this? Or are their nice ones as well? What about the rubbish clearance squads organised by the Tigers Oendan who help the stadium staff clean up the rubbish after the game? The reason Jingu authorities pay more attention to Tigers fans is that there are more of them and they spend more money.

Sure they might make lots of noise and blow up balloons but this is basically harmless entertainment. It hurts no one and it puts money into the pockets of the Jingu stadium and helps Yakult survive as a baseball team. I have said I would like to see more Swallows fans at Jingu but they don’t seem to come. A problem with the Swallows perhaps? Until the Swallows sort themselves out they will have to rely on Tigers fans and Giants fans. At least these people turn out to support their teams. If you want things to change then you – as Swallows fans – have to do something. It’s no good whining about Tigers fans and their habits. Make Jingu a place full of Swallows fans and then maybe you can legitimately complain about other teams fans.

^^^^^Post over.

Move along folks, there’s nothing further to see here.