Average Attendance Figures Over Years

I assume that you're referring to this spreadsheet with attendance figures from 2005 to 2007.

There's a very good reason that it only goes back to 2005 - that's when the NPB started actually counting bodies through the gates rather than estimating attendance based on the noise level. The Giants published 55,000 people for every home game at Tokyo Dome every year that I can remember, yet they haven't come close to that for a single game since publishing real figures in 2005. The figures before 2005 are total fiction, so I wouldn't bother with them.

After a short investigation in Japanese, I was only able to come up with the story about wearing the Kintetsu helmet as a pinch hitter for Akiyama as a Nomo All Star incident. Nothing on the Nike affair. And the bibliography of The Meaning of Ichiro didn't seem to shine any light on this one either. Guess I'll ask Whiting-san where he got it.

Got it with the attendance figures. What I was curious about is that Whiting and others have all reported a drop in fan support for NPB teams as the fans are all tuning in to watch their favorite Japanese players in the MLB games, while some have argued that this simply isn't true.

Unfortunately, what I presume you are saying is that before 2005, NPB fudged attendance numbers so that Whiting may be right in the assessment of the reported figures, but may be wrong because the numbers are not correct. Furthermore, if the true numbers only go back to 2005, it is hard to tell what effect Japanese players leaving Japan for the MLB has had on attendance and attention to NPB games as this trend has been occurring for much longer than the past three years. Finally, these numbers don't indicate anything about TV ratings, which is probably the bigger indication of Japanese fans interest. If there are public records of TV ratings, which I don't know if there are, then they probably, too, only date back to 2005 in the true estimates.

Thus, the jury is out on what really happened, and if Whiting is correct or not.

Does this sound right to you, or do you have different takes on the issue?

Thanks for your help.

PS: I don't mean to criticize Whiting here. I think his work is terrific and he has done a great job compiling information from a whole range of sources and makes the information easily understandable to a wide audience. I was merely confused by the opposing arguments out there and want to get the information square - if possible.

I do wish Whiting-san would stop saying that. I also have the deepest respect for Whiting, and I don't think that what he is saying is necessarily false. But the way it is being presented does not seem to fit my observations.

Professional sports are losing the younger generation. I agree with that. But Japanese professional baseball isn't losing to MLB or to soccer, it's losing to cultural changes whereby the younger generation is more fixated with the entertainment they can get out of their phones than attending an event. Where can one find supporting evidence for that? I don't know. But that's more the impression that I get from my own observations.

Yet, there are still a lot of young people attending baseball games. Everyone hasn't abandoned sport as an entertainment. Baseball goes on as a great entertainment value. It's a place where friends can get together and be part of an even larger group. Phone services can't offer that. So I don't think that professional baseball is going to ultimately dwindle away and die due to competing sports and other entertainment options. (Mismanagement by the owning companies is a different matter.)

Movida Solutions, in cooperation with Pacific League Marketing, may have some useful data on the cable TV market. (The link in the upper-right hand corner of that page will open a mail message to them.) They also have a hand in "Pro Yakyu 24" - a system whereby one may watch all Pacific League games via streaming on phones. It would be interesting to know how many people (other than me) use the service.

The source for TV ratings are what are published in newspapers and said on TV news. I'm not aware of how to get such directly from the compiler of the information. If they can be contacted, they should have data dating back decades. I can't recall the company's name that does it, though. Anybody?

Unfortunately, I'm not an expert in this field. So what I say doesn't have nearly the weight of someone like Robert Whiting - who does have access to many of the people and data to support what he is saying. I'm on the outside looking in, just trying to express what I think might be going on in the black box which is NPB and its surrounding industry. I just suspect that the data available is flawed. And that most people are asking the wrong questions. More transparency is needed on all fronts.

Also, because my work needs to be scholarly, where did you get this fantastic spreadsheet/what would be appropriate to cite?

I put the spreadsheet together based on information published in either Nikkan Sports (a daily sports newspaper in Japanese) or Shukan Baseball (a weekly baseball magazine in Japanese) depending on the year. I just verified the 2007 figures with the "2008 Baseball Record Book" by Baseball Magazine Sha.

Ok. I got it. And I enjoyed reading your interpretation. It is an additional reason for the difficulties NPB is facing these days that I hadn't thought of.

If I may add a little extra detail. In the television area there is also an increasing regionalization and fragmentation. This is also creating difficulties in judging how big the television audience for baseball is. As Michael mentioned, viewing figures are difficult to come by and TV channels do not release them.

For example, NHK is spending a lot on its MLB package, but it is devoted to Japanese stars not to MLB per se. However, it is very reluctant to give any indication of how big its audience actually is, and in fact, NHK officials will give you different interpretations depending on their particular bias. In fact it is possible for a baseball fan to follow both the Japanese stars in MLB and their own NPB team, and a lot do.

Indications I have seen do not indicate that Japanese fans are abandoning NPB for MLB in any great numbers. Anecdotally, people will identify themselves as Ichiro, Matsui, or Matsuzaka fans not Mariners, Yankees, or Red Sox fans, and then go on to state their favorite team as an NPB team.