Jim Allen's Insults

- He goes on to say that although the Giants' popularity is not what it was [...]

I'm not sure how Jim is pointing this out, but if I'm reading it right, the Giants aren't the team they were in popularity, the Giants will always be the same old Yomiuri Giants though. They will always draw fans year in and year out at the Tokyo Dome and where ever they play.

To go to the point to talk about Hanshin in the way he has is kind of disturbing, and unbeknowing of me.

This is what he says about the popularity of the Giants:

"Granted, the Giants' popularity is not what it once was. Kyojin fans no longer pack the home park of every opposing team, and the Giants' TV ratings are dwindling. Even so, no other team can command enough of a nationwide audience needed for prime time national telecasts."

Again, this is simply not true in regard to the Tigers. The Tigers also have fans all over Japan. Whether they're playing in Fukuoka, Sapporo, Toyama, or Tokyo, the fans are there in large numbers. The Tigers do have a national following.

And I suppose I should have added something else to my earlier post, and that is, if Pro Yakyu truly had a level playing field, with enforcement of draft rules, an independent commissioner, profit sharing, balanced media coverage etc., then the Giants would not have become so dominant.

Maybe Jim needs to focus on that part of the problem instead.

I am not surprised by what Jim Allen wrote. It merely demonstrates the complete lack of touch with the fans existing in the Giants' establishment. He fails to justify the need for one league and goes against what the majority of Japanese baseball fans and players actually wanted.

One thing that emerged from the debate about the future of Japanese baseball was how teams have to build up a regional loyalty. Jim does mention that the Tigers have done this, but then goes on to discount its value and to write complete rubbish about Daiei. Their trouble is due to the mismanagement by the parent company, not the baseball team's lack of success.

The whole article serves to show that there is some way to go, and that the Giants' establishment are lagging far behind.

I did not offer any rationale for going to one league, because I do not advocate it.

It is the dream of Lions' owner Yoshiaki Tsutsumi and former Giants' owner Tsuneo Watanabe to reduce the number of teams.

Unless, the current system fixes its revenue sharing problem, as I have written repeatedly, simply reducing the number of teams will not be a solution - there will always be teams that pay through the nose, so the Giants can profit.

They can fix the current problems with 12 teams. 10 is, in my view, a dangerous and overly simplistic solution.

As a Hanshin fan myself, I don't agree at all with "parasite." How can someone say they don't have a fan base comparable to Yomiuri? Have you looked in the stands? But we'll wait for the attendence for the teams.

First of all, let me thank you all for reading my column. Your enthusiasm is much appreciated.

I am a big fan of the Hanshin Tigers because they are the top regional team in the Japan. That being said, I am no fan of the team's ownership - or any other owners for that matter.

People identify with the Tigers because of where they live. This is also true of the Dragons, Carp, Hawks, BayStars, Marines, and Fighters, and to a lesser extent the BlueWave and Buffaloes. I have nothing but support for the fans. The owners are another matter.

The parasitical nature of the five dwarves is this: They have access to a large amount of cash: at least 1.6 billion yen per year from the TV rights to their home games against the Giants. The revenues from local broadcasts on terrestrial TV or daytime weekend games is a pittance compared to prime-time national advertising income the Giants attract.

Cable and UHF revenues are barely worth mentioning. The first year of their cable deal (in 2000) brought Pacific League clubs (excluding the Lions) 500,000 yen each - for the entire season. The Central League teams (and the Giants who rake in five times that much from their home games) have no interest in sharing this with the PL clubs, who are in essence their business partners.

The CL teams want the PL clubs as a source of Japan Series revenue and free agent talent, and for the fact that 12 teams create a bigger market for professional baseball than six - but about 75 percent of the TV revenue flows into the CL, and those clubs have zero interest in addressing that issue. Of course, at least half of all the TV revenue is generated by interest in Giants games.

The Hawks are a tremendous ball club, much better managed on the baseball side than the Tigers and have built up an excellent following without the help of nationally televised games against the Giants. True, the parent company is the problem - but the team does not have the revenue stream to balance its enormous payroll.

If the Hawks had the 1.6 billion+ a year the Tigers get from Giants national telecasts, they could afford their team and would knock the socks off the Tigers on their balance sheet as well.

That's all for now. Keep the slings and arrows coming.

Jim

Jim, I appreciate the response, which helps to clarify where you're coming from. But remember, in Kansai, an attack on the Hanshin Tigers, especially by outsiders - whether the target is the management, players, or anyone associated with the club - can easily be regarded by fans as an attack on them. That's how loyal the following is, and that's part of the problem I have with your lumping the Tigers in with the other teams.

The Tigers are the second oldest franchise in Pro Yakyu with the prestige that goes along with that, and they should be afforded appropriate respect. Fine, criticize the management, but don't use provocative and loaded language which can be misconstrued (although I suspect you wanted to be provocative).

But you haven't answered by main point: that the Tigers are not parasitical; on the contrary, they contribute more than their fair share to the success of Pro Yakyu. The team attracts fans to ballparks nationwide; their merchandise sales last year boosted the Kansai economy by many billions of yen; and even if TV revenues were not great (you haven't listed any figures for the Tigers, so I don't really know what you're basing this on) - the TV audience is certainly there.

If they owned their own TV network, then we'd know for sure what the TV audience was, but Hanshin is a railway/department store company, and not a media conglomerate. In fact, if Yomiuri weren't so caught up with cultivating their own team's image, and telecast Tigers games nationwide as well as Giants games, then we'd be able to compare the respective national TV audiences of both teams. But they don't, and we can't.

But you can't seriously call the Tigers "parasitical." The Giants are not the only cash cow in Pro Yakyu. The Tigers are up there, too. Maybe not with TV rights at present, but certainly in the more traditional cashflow sources.

Yes, NPB needs to find a way to harness all revenue sources and use these for the benefit of Pro Yakyu as a whole, instead of each team taking in their own share and leaving the others out to dry. But the big losers would then be the Giants, and how much would they be prepared to give away? Not much I suspect. Then you could write a column criticizing the Giants for being uncooperative and unwilling to change for the good of Pro Yakyu.

Jim,

Many thanks for the response. However, I think you miss the point about Tigers/Giants games. Both teams are vital to the revenue generated from these games. Without the Tigers and their support the Giants would not be able to generate so much revenue. That was the major flaw in Nabetsune's suggestion that the Giants move to the Pacific League. The revenue fall would have been significant. Your article failed to acknowledge this two way relationship. Mijow makes a good point - the Tigers' product marketing and locked in support give them an independence that puts them on the same level as the Giants.

The question also must be asked, what would the Giants do if they lost the TV revenue?

I agree 100 percent with most of the points you make.

1. "Parasite" was used not to create controversy but to express frustration at the teams who survive on their lucrative share of the Giants' TV market - and thus refuse to share it with others. The Tigers contribute a lot to the CL's profitablitly at the gate, but the organization is as hard-headed as the rest when it comes to thinking about the structure of Pro Yakyu as a whole.


2. The Hanshin railroad is considered by some to be the progenitor of professional baseball in Japan, not the Yomiuri Shimbun. The nucleus of Japan's first pro team, The Shibaura Club (c. 1920), was made up of guys who played ball for Hanshin as amateurs. The team had no league competition and died out under the sponsorship of the Hankyu railroad in Takarazuka a year or two after the great Kanto Earthquake.
   
   By publicizing its pro team, Yomiuri laid a foundation for a league which the earlier effort lacked - and of course Hanshin was a part of that. The Tigers were the best team in the early years of the Japan League.


3. Next to the Giants, the Tigers are the best road draw in Japan. If there were no Tigers, Giants' profits would plummet. The Hawks are a close third by the way.
   
   Still, Tigers games against other CL clubs besides the Giants are not aired nationally - because there is a lack of confidence, rightly or wrongly, that they could not attract enough viewers to support the high cost of national sponsors.


4. The Yomiuri media conglomerate created the Giants' nationwide popularity by force-feeding the nation on home games courtesy of NTV in the 1960s and '70s. This was a daring strategy that paid off handsomely thanks to the Giants' unprecedented success. At the time, NTV's cash cow was not baseball but pro wrestling.


5. Because the Giants developed the TV market, Yomiuri is in no hurry to give up a penny. The newspaper business is not always as profitable as the Giants are.
   
   In this respects, the policy is understandable, but represents an obstacle to energizing the entire Pro Yakyu structure.


6. If all teams had a more equal share of the pie, there would be much more action in many more markets, driving up fan interest and improving the level of on-field competition. A Pacific League that merely exists generates interest in baseball that Central League teams benefit from now. A thriving PL would shoot Pro Yakyu popularity through the roof and create greater wealth for all, but the sharing needed to make it happen is not in the CL game plan.
   
   The CL teams, all of them, have an enormous economic advantage over their PL serfs, and the CL teams want to keep that advantage. They are not interested in the bold short-term sacrifices needed to ensure a thriving Pro Yakyu structure.

Sorry for being long winded.

I don't think such a post qualifies as long winded - it was very interesting. Unfortunately the use of the term "parasites" is emotive and would certainly create controversy.

There is some inconsistency in your position though. You talk about sharing the market which can be taken to imply that the clubs should move towards a single league, but you state quite clearly that you favour a two league system.

If you refer to sharing TV revenue, then this should be the responsibility of the NPB. However, the Giants would probably refuse to give up their TV rights (they have nothing to fall back on if they do). Furthermore, if the Giants switched leagues, the situation would just be reversed in respect of the teams, except for the Tigers, and they would lose a lot of revenue. A Giants/Hawks series would not generate anywhere near the same income flow as the Giants/Tigers series.

Interestingly, the Tigers are not the team blocking changes. They were the ones who proposed inter-league games during the recent crisis (a greater number than have been accepted) and Nozaki-san is on record as welcoming both Rakuten and Livedoor. The Giants were against both.

There also have been encouraging signs of improvement in television coverage with NHK televising more games (unfortunately just on BS). These have been higher quality than the usual rubbish the commercial channels serve up. A pinprick, no doubt, but a start nonetheless.

For Pro Yaku to improve the power of the Giants needs to be broken and they need to become just another team. This is why the resistance of the Central League teams was welcome (it's a first step) and shouldn't be denigrated but rather encouraged.

I think Christopher hit the nail on the head. For it to be totally fair, the TV revenue has to be managed by NPB and redistributed to the teams along some sort of formula that recognizes each team's contribution, but with some allowance for profit sharing.

And if NPB negotiated the rights with the broadcasters as a package, then they'd probably be able to rake in more, and they'd also be in a position to insist on (1) fairer coverage of the less popular teams, (2) a wider geographical reach, and (3) a certain standard of coverage - that is, no more games beginning at 7pm and ending at 9:24 pm in the middle of the ninth inning!

But I'm afraid the Giants would block any reforms along these lines. We probably need to reform the whole structure of NPB. Unfortunately, the way the Giants and their allies in the Pacific League were behaving, it was if they wanted to destroy professional baseball in Japan. Their half baked merger-and-contraction plan would have driven fans away, probably ending up costing all teams money.

The opposition of the "dwarves" and the player's union probably saved NPB from a bleak future.

I'm afraid Jim's right. It is the same in sports around the world. Take football. The Primera Liga in Spain is nothing without Real Madrid, ditto England's Premier League and Manchester United. And look at the Champions League last season - people were denigrating it because it was "only" Porto and Monaco in the final. They were champions of their respective leagues that season, too. Hardly minnows, but with nothing like the clout of more illustrious European names.

It is the Uniteds, Reals, and Giants of the world who make the sport. We just have to accept that and get on with beating them on the pitch!

I'm sure Jim isn't dissing for the sake of it.

Well I don't know why Jim always disses the Tigers. Maybe it's a Tokyo thing.

I acknowledge that the Giants are dominant. But to call the Hanshin Tigers "dwarves" or "parasites" is a bit too much. I could understand it coming from a Kyojin fan, but an unbiased commentator?

I think you might be missing the point - just because one team might have a bigger name does not make it the most important. Far more often the rivalries between teams are more important. Looking at your examples, Real are nothing without Barcelona. Likewise the English premiership is more than Manchester United (what about Arsenal?).

What makes the Central League is the Tigers/Giants rivalry, not the Giants' abuse of the system. If neither of these teams existed, their would be other rivalries that would take their place.

The Giants need the other teams as much as they need the Giants. It is the competition between teams which makes the sport.

Anything that gets the fans (and players) stirred up enough to demand those in charge of NPB to actually steer the f***in' boat is fine by me. A finer example of having 12 stooges in charge of the Titanic's deck chair arrangement is hard to imagine, but should the ship go down, the only life boats will be for the "captains" who steered it straight into the iceeberg.

It seems like NPB is perhaps the platonic ideal of that old book, what was the title? Something like "The Myth of Japanese Leadership"? By that Von W. guy.

Jim Allen responded to the discussion on this thread in his newspaper column today (Thursday) - "Tigers' fans bare their fangs." He gave this site a plug (with a rating of "excellent") and in particular addressed the objection to his use of the term "parasite."

It wasn't an apology as such, but he did acknowledge the contribution the Hanshin Tigers make to Pro Yakyu, which was good to see.