The sport teams owned by corporations have contributed to Japanese competitive sports since the Second World War. But in the 1990s some corporations abolished their teams because of the economic recession. In this tough situation, recently those corporations that haven't chosen to discontinue their teams have tried to change "corporate teams" into "club teams" instead of abolishing them. The patterns of club teams are various, but a common element is that they attempt to develop strong connections between the team and their local area. I would like to take up the "Sakai Blazers", which was established in 2000 with the aim of becoming a club team strongly rooted in the local area in the future, after having been a corporate team owned by Shin-nittetsu. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the Sakai Blazers' undertakings focusing on how they raised funds and how they have been acknowledged. The present annual operating expenses of the Blazers are 270 million yen, and almost two-thirds of it is given by Shin-nittetu as advertising expenses, though it has been decided that the funds from Shin-nittetu will be reduced to one-half in 2005. So they have embarked on various new businesses to establish a self-supporting system. For example, they have made a request to the Japan Volleyball Association that V League Organization should adopt a home & away system and admit multiple uniform sponsors. These requests were put into practice in 2003. The Sakai Blazers built up connections with the Sakai City government. They dispatch players to junior high school clubs in Sakai City to teach volleyball, conduct volleyball classes for citizens and hold a sport event called the "Blazers Cup" with funds from the Sakai school board. They put an emblem on the uniforms proclaiming that Sakai would be a city designated by an ordinance, with funds from the city. When the Blazers was established, they had no connections based in the local area, other than that with Shin-nittetu. In three years they set up these financial networks, since positive acknowledgement is indispensable.

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