1999 Volume 7 Pages 1-6,75
The Japanese professional baseball business is now experiencing a critical situation. This could be seen in the symptoms below.
1) Changes in the market structure—Japanese young people do not attend or watch baseball games much any more.
2) The lack of the “regional belongingness”—partly due to the early destruction of the rural communities, and partly due to the rapid population mobility, it has become hard to establish any franchise team system.
3) The Japanese mass media pay broadcast royalty to just one baseball team—the Yomiuri Giants, as against to the baseball leagues.
4) And the outflux of eminent players to the MLB.
Should any drastic measures not be taken, the professional baseball in Japan would suffer considerable downsizing.
