Professional baseball, the origin of professional sport in Japan, has been institutionalized through the leading involvement of corporations, which are economic organizations with the purpose of profit.
The Bundesliga in Germany, which serves as an ideal for the J.League, is organized around nonprofit organizations known as Verein. German nonprofit organizations operate primarily based on general meetings of local citizens and voting in elections and play a role in negotiating with governments and businesses while consolidating and representing the views of local citizens. For the Bundesliga, in which only Verein had been permitted to participate, the commercialization of the 1990s saw permission to operate clubs extended to for-profit companies. However, with the establishment of the “50+1 rule” and the “club licensing system”, clubs were required to hold a majority of their own voting rights. Under such a system, the Bundesliga has contributed to the creation of “civil society”-formed through collaboration between businesses, government, communities, and nonprofit organizations—while centered on a “citizenry” that seeks to organize groups and associations and influence political and economic systems.
This study analyzed the J.League philosophy from this public sphere perspective and found that although a philosophy aimed at collaboration between governments, businesses, and citizens has persisted to the present day, and partnerships between businesses and governments have materialized—local governments, for example, hold shares in professional soccer clubs—the specific roles that citizens and nonprofit organizations can play in league and club operations remain undetermined. Moreover, this challenge was attributed to differences in the systems around corporations in Japan and Germany.
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