BayStars To Change Hands, Maybe

This has been a strange week. Japanese baseball has made the front page of Nikkan Sports three days in a row now, something that didn't happen during the regular season.

Nonetheless, these past two days (November 16th and 17th), the headlines have focused around the transfer of majority stock holding in the Yokohama BayStars from Maruha to Nippon Housou (a radio network).

As it stands, Maruha (a company that mostly deals in sea foods) owns 53.8% of stock in the BayStars, Nippon Housou 30.4%, and Tokyo Housou (TBS - radio and TV I believe) the remainder. In a deal that would exchange stock to give Nippon Housou a majority 51% ownership, there are four stipulations that must be met:

1. The deal must be completed by March 31, 2002.


2. Total number of stock and/or cash will be discussed later.


3. At the end of the exchange, Nippon Housou will be the primary owner.


4. The team name and/or franchize may not be changed.

There is just one little snag to the whole deal. Nippon Housou is part of the Fuji/Sankei Group which owns 20% of the Yakult Swallows. (They used to be the primary owner.) The Giants' Watanabe owner yesterday spoke out against the deal on these grounds, stating tha it was a conflict of interest, despite the fact that the owners are from two different companies within the same group.

One angle being played here is, if like Watanabe-owner said on the 15th that the number of clubs be reduced to 10, that this deal could mean the forshadowing for a Yakult-Yokohama merger.

All of this comes after some queries from you fans about franchising and buying MLB clubs, to which I replied that there isn't much of a market for that sort of thing. If any team were to be sold, I was sure that it would have been Daiei, as so many rumors suggest.

The last change of hands for clubs was in 1989 when the Nankai Hawks were sold to Daiei and the Hankyu Braves were sold to Orix. In the Central League, the last transfer was the Swallows moving from the Sankei Group to Yakult in 1970.