Yakyu Restoration - Revitalize Baseball

• While a flight from Tokyo to Seoul can be cheaper than a flight to Hokkaido at times, is the reverse the same? Same with Taipei? While the Japaense teams may be able to afford it, will the teams in Korea and Taiwan be able to afford flight, occomidations (hotel rates are much higher in Japan), and other costs when coming for a tour of a few Japanese ball clubs?


• Will Japanese clubs share gate reciepts as an incentive (and to offset costs) for teams to come to Japan? They don't share with the other dometic teams now, how can they be expected to place nice with foreign guests? Conversely, is there any financial incentive to play in Korea and Taiwan?


• While I'm sure that fans will come in great numbers while this is new, will they continue to go to the ballpark to see international baseball?

The last item has really been eating at me since I started invistigating the CPBL and TML merger. Look at the average attendance for games in the CPBL:

Year   Games    Total    Avg.
1990    180    899,955  5,000
1991    180  1,050,405  5,836
1992    180  1,238,063  6,878
1993    270  1,600,549  5,928
1994    270  1,607,677  5,954
1995    300  1,646,361  5,488
1996    300  1,364,424  4,548
1997    336    685,832  2,041
1998    315    690,089  2,191
1999    278*   496,433  1,786
2000    180    301,671  1,676
2001    180    337,707  1,876
2002    180    532,304  2,957
2003    300    958,596  3,195
Total 3,449 13,410,066  3,888

* 1999 was shortened due to a large earthquake. [Source - CPBL.com.tw in Chinese]

As you can see, the average attendance for baseball in the CPBL is a digit less than games in Japan. CPBL apparently had an identity crisis for a while and lost many fans, but even at the height of their success, they couldn't even manage an average close to the lowest market Japanese team. (I'm still looking for complete TML attendance records, by the way.)

How about in Korea? I haven't really looked into Korean attendance at all, so any input anyone can come up with will be much appriciated.

The one positive aspect with attendance that I can report is that, when Daiei hosted Orix in Taipei in May of 2002, the two game series saw 11,000 and 12,000 fans respectively. That tells me that it is possible to draw in Taiwan. Furthermore, the Japanese teams may actually have the effect of raising attendance in Taiwan. At least, until the novelty wears off. But comparing 11,000 fans at a game in Taipei to better than 45,000 fans a night at Fukuoka Dome, it's not much to get the Japanese owners excited about.

One thing I got from reading the "Ninja Catchers" paper about Taiwanese baseball is that the Taiwanese actually prefer Japanese baseball to MLB. If this is still true or not, I can't say, but after having their own benevolent dictator following the Japanese emperial rule seemed to give the Taiwanese a more appriciative feeling toward the Japanese for introducing the game to them than I get the impression that Korea feels. It's going to take some strong leadership to make such a league work, but will such leadership from the Pacific League feel too much like emperical encroachment of almost a century ago?

Essentially, the question I never asked myself before was:

What will such a merger look like from the Korean or Taiwanese point of view?

There is a lot of history between these three countries. There is so much potential if these three countries could come together and work as one (in baseball and other facets of life). I really want to see something work here, but fear that political, economic, and xenophobic barriers will prevent this dream from becoming a reality in the near future.

Really, I'm usually much more optomistic than this. I guess seeing how the owners are totally ignoring everyone not on the board of those 12 companies is getting to me. The Central League owners are just against the merger into one league, they don't care one way or the other about Kintetsu and Orix merging. This is the root of the problem! Why can't they see that?