(Editor’s note: Just after SBJ went to press with this story, the Dodgers fired Ohtani’s longtime interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, after Ohtani’s legal team accused Mizuhara of stealing millions to cover his debt from wagers placed with a bookmaking operation that is under federal investigation. ESPN reported that wire transfers of at least $4.5 million were sent from Ohtani's bank account to the allegedly illegal bookmaker, Mathew Bowyer. Ohtani did not answer questions after the Dodgers’ game against the Padres in Seoul on March 21. As of late afternoon on March 21, the Dodgers had not commented beyond confirming Mizuhara’s termination.)

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Lon Rosen first saw hints of the Shohei Ohtani phenomenon when he stepped inside the offices of Japanese CEOs and chairmen this past winter. The Los Angeles Dodgers’ executive vice president and chief marketing officer made two trips to Japan after the team signed Ohtani to a record-setting 10-year, $700 million contract, eager to explore the market for new sponsorship opportunities. Every room Rosen entered seemed to have something related to the two-time MVP. Autographed memorabilia. Apparel. Photos. Many collections even amounted to what Rosen called “shrines or mini museums” of Ohtani.

“I’ve been in this position for 12 years with our ownership group, and I really want to stress this: We’re used to having superstars,” said Rosen, who was quick to point to names on the current Dodgers roster including former MVPs Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman. “But obviously, Shohei is different.”

It’s not just that Ohtani is the first player since Babe Ruth to be elite as both a hitter (44 home runs a season ago) and a pitcher (a 2.84 ERA the last three years combined), or even that he transcends superstardom within MLB as the sport’s biggest global icon. It’s that, as a source of revenue generation, he is establishing new parameters of what’s possible in the sport.

Companies set sales records. Brands create new products just to meet his requests. Television networks rethink their programming schedules. And opposing teams are eager to capialize on his arrival in their town. All of that might have once been a familiar part of the baseball landscape, but had recently been more commonly associated with football, basketball and soccer stars. Ohtani, 29, may be baseball’s most marketable player since Derek Jeter hung up his pinstripes a decade ago.

“He moves the needle for us,” MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said.

The league is not unique in that regard, and it’s never been more apparent now that Ohtani is wearing Dodger blue after six years with the Angels. His massive contract represents the marriage of two giants, a union that MLB anticipates will help it take another step forward in attendance and attention this season after a banner year for the league in 2023. 

The Dodgers have led the league in total attendance in each of the past 10 full seasons; they are inside the top three in sponsorship revenue on a yearly basis; and, as part-owner of Spectrum SportsNet LA, they have one of MLB’s most team-friendly and lucrative local TV deals, which has facilitated much of their roster payroll spending. 

There’s also the most obvious fact: The Dodgers win. They’ve been to the playoffs in 11 straight seasons. Despite having Ohtani anchor their lineup and rotation, the Angels never advanced to the postseason with him. And while Ohtani will not be able to pitch this season because of an elbow injury, he stands an excellent chance of making his playoff debut this fall, which would give MLB a welcome boost at its most important time of year.

“He would have been great in a lot of places,” Manfred said of Ohtani, “but I will say this: Obviously, him being in a major market and on one of our iconic franchises is a good development from our perspective.”

L.A.’s Miyako Hotel has an Ohtani mural that speaks to his status as one of Hollywood’s brightest stars.getty images

Still, for all the clout the Dodgers brand carries across the globe, Ohtani has opened up new avenues. The team did not have any Japanese sponsors in place for the 2024 season until inking Ohtani, but it has already met with about 20 Japanese companies and has reached agreements with at least six, including airline ANA, Toyo Tires, Daiso and Inaba, all of which had rotating signage behind home plate during the team’s spring training games. MLB is continuing its deals with nine media partners in Japan, including NHK, to ensure all Dodgers games air in the country this season. 

When the Dodgers on March 20 opened the 2024 season with a two-game series against the San Diego Padres in Seoul, just a 2-hour, 20-minute flight from Tokyo, they hosted many of their new Japanese sponsors for lunch ahead of MLB’s first games in South Korea.

MLB will also look to capitalize, especially now that Ohtani is playing for a World Series contender. To take just one example, the league now has some increased leverage as it looks to find an ad sponsor for batting helmets in the postseason. MLB Deputy Commissioner Noah Garden has said the league intends to have such a sponsor for this upcoming postseason after not having one each of the last two despite a provision in the 2022 collective-bargaining agreement that granted the league the option to implement ads on helmets.

“If he’s putting on that helmet, that’s an opportunity for us to create a lot of reach,” Garden said. “So international companies definitely come to the table.”

Japan, with its population of 126 million and baseball as its top sport, is MLB’s most important international market by a wide margin. There has been a steady affinity for the Dodgers in the country dating back to Hideo Nomo’s signing in 1995 ushering in the modern era of Japanese players crossing the Pacific to play in MLB. And few have ever been as big in their home country as Ohtani.

“I wasn’t alive for it, but he’s probably like The Beatles were,” said Ben Verlander, who hosts a baseball podcast on Fox Sports and traveled to Japan in 2022 to trace Ohtani’s upbringing in the country before sitting down for one of only two one-on-one interviews Ohtani has done with U.S.-based outlets. “It’s truly fascinating. And it’s not just because of the athlete he is and how much success he’s having. They’re just immensely proud of him, of the way he’s representing Japan.”

That feeling reached a fever pitch last March when Ohtani led Japan to the World Baseball Classic title. Ohtani drove metrics across the board, including record viewership: Japan played in three of the four most-watched games in tournament history during the 2023 WBC. Ohtani’s Instagram following increased by more than 2.1 million during the tournament — an 89% increase — as he became the first MLB player to surpass four million followers on Instagram. A year later, he’s now up to 7.7 million.

“That was the ultimate coming-out party for him,” said CAA’s Nez Balelo, who represents Ohtani. “He opened every door globally.”

This year, Ohtani will rake in about $70 million in endorsements via deals with a list of 19 brands that includes Kowa, Mitsubishi, Seiko and Hugo Boss. “He’s very careful about who he selects to endorse,” Balelo said. “He has to understand the vision and he has to appreciate and respect the product.”

Ohtani’s best-known and most collaborative brand relationship is with New Balance, which signed him to a long-term deal in January 2023. In courting Ohtani, Chris Davis, New Balance chief marketing officer, said meetings were “intimate, personal and conversational,” but insists “we really didn’t adjust our approach. … Probably the most important component of our identification process is that he was potentially the only athlete within Major League Baseball who had the ability to transcend baseball on a global level.”

Ohtani, in turn, shared his vision with New Balance leadership, including his hope for a collaboration that was “fully integrated,” Davis said.

“Shohei himself wanted to ensure that his fielding glove was New Balance, his batting gloves, his cleats, his performance apparel were all New Balance,” Davis said. “We had never made a fielding glove before. We had never made batting gloves. But it was a challenge that excited us and it was a challenge that enabled us to realize our own brand ambition of improving.”

New Balance rolled out a commercial campaign featuring Ohtani decked out in the company’s products that aired more than 1,000 times over the course of last season. The company reported $6.5 billion in annual sales in 2023, a 23% year-over-year increase. Davis called Ohtani’s impact on New Balance’s bottom line “significant, not only in the United States and Japan, but globally.”

The Dodgers could eclipse 4 million in attendance for the first time this season.getty images

The company’s latest effort came March 19 when it announced Ohtani’s personal logo, which was designed with direct input from Ohtani. The company released limited edition shirts in conjunction with the announcement, including a “Made in Japan” version, and produced 50 limited edition gloves that it made available at its storefront in Los Angeles. The gloves were made in Japan in collaboration with Wilson and have the precise specs of the glove that Ohtani uses himself.

New Balance wasn’t the only brand to benefit from Ohtani’s star power. In anticipation of unprecedented demand for Ohtani merchandise once he signed with his new team, Fanatics unveiled a new feature using Notify Me to allow customers to track his signing and be alerted when products became available. Tens of thousands signed up and later converted, said Andrew Low Ah Kee, Fanatics Commerce CEO.

Ohtani set Fanatics’ all-time record for highest sales within 48 hours of a jersey release, more than doubling the record set by Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami jersey sales. In Japan, Fanatics did more business in the first two days after Ohtani signed than the sum of its business for all 30 MLB clubs over the past two years.

“It was far and away the biggest single-player event that we’ve ever seen in the history of the company,” Low Ah Kee said. “There are some events that compare, like a Super Bowl or conference championships, but that’s a whole team in a championship moment — not just a single player.”

At ESPN, Rick Mace, director of programming and acquisitions, is responsible for leading the effort to schedule the network’s 33 MLB games this season (Opening Night, 25 additional “Sunday Night Baseball” games; four flex games; two Seoul Series games and a Mexico City game), which he typically submits to the league by mid-December. Because no one knew for certain where Ohtani would wind up or when he would sign, Mace had to take a unique approach to mapping out ESPN’s baseball schedule.

“I can honestly say I have never gone to the extent of designing backup plans based on a single player,” said Mace, who is in his 13th year with ESPN.

Mace is of the opinion that MLB fans look first at teams before players. To that point, he previously worked to get the Angels on ESPN on occasion because of the allure of Ohtani and fellow MVP Mike Trout, but he never looked to max out their number of games with six appearances. His outlook is different now that Ohtani has joined L.A.’s more popular MLB franchise.

“In a typical year, we’ll usually max out on the Dodgers just because of their fan base and the high profile of the team,” Mace said. “The difference this year is the Dodgers really became essentially the fulcrum of our schedule. We built around them. Putting a star player on a star team absolutely makes that type of difference.”

The Ohtani Effect is evident even in ticket sales. It might have seemed that the Dodgers, who have led the majors in attendance for 10 straight seasons, had little more room to grow — until Ohtani dispelled that notion. After averaging 47,530 fans per game at 56,000-seat Dodger Stadium last year and drawing 3.85 million fans total, the Dodgers now have a chance to eclipse 4 million for the first time in franchise history. 

StubHub saw a dramatic spike in daily searches for the Dodgers in the days following Ohtani’s signing, and that has converted to an increase in ticket sales by more than three times year over year. The Dodgers are featured in six of StubHub’s 10 best-selling games so far this season (outside of home openers); the Yankees are the next closest with three.

Ticket prices are swelling in conjunction with demand. In mid-March, Dodgers tickets were going for an average of $213, a 6% increase year over year, according to SeatGeek, the league’s official ticket marketplace. As of mid-March, the Dodgers’ home opener had an average resale ticket price of $525, which was 25% higher than the next most in-demand Opening Day game (the always-popular Cubs visiting the defending World Series champion Rangers). 

“In the ticketing landscape, but also more broadly in sports, this is the age of the celebrity,” said Oliver Marvin, SeatGeek director of business operations. “So even with a top-market team [the Dodgers], you can still add huge year-over-year growth because of that superstar that they’ve added to the mix. Parts of it are surprising because we haven’t seen it in baseball in a little bit, but you’ve seen it in other sports.”

It’s no surprise, then, the Dodgers are also the most in-demand team on the road. Their resale price for road tickets was $146 in mid-March, according to SeatGeek. That’s an 11% increase year over year, good news for teams in the National League West, which will go from hosting Ohtani one series every other year to two series per season.

Ohtani signed with New Balance in 2023 and now has his own logo.new balance

“We can project that our revenues are all going to increase because of this one individual,” Arizona Diamondbacks President Derrick Hall said.

This season the Diamondbacks have dynamically priced their seven home games against the Dodgers higher on average than games featuring any other National League opponent. Arizona will also host its Japanese Heritage Celebration on May 1, at the end of a three-game series against Los Angeles.

The Diamondbacks have even heard from Japanese companies about sponsorship opportunities.

“We’re going to sell more tickets, we know that our ratings are going to increase and we know that we’re going to be able to sell some more corporate partnerships even for just those games with companies trying to take advantage of the calendar,” Hall said.

Ohtani’s contract could also prove to be a game-changer. He deferred all but $2 million each season, thereby allowing the Dodgers to continue to aggressively spend on payroll throughout his tenure and charting a path future top-of-the-market stars might emulate. “This player, at this time, was a fairly unique situation,” said MLBPA Executive Director Tony Clark. “But we’ll see.”

For as loud as Ohtani’s impact is on and off the field, he mostly stays quiet. He doesn’t speak English publicly. He does not have an account on Twitter or TikTok. His two one-on-one interviews with U.S.-based outlets have come with a fellow CAA client (Verlander) and an MLB rights holder (ESPN+ for a documentary about him that debuted in November); he also joined Betts and Freeman for an MLB Network sit-down during training camp.

Ohtani is so private that even the news about his recent marriage caught essentially everyone by surprise — including Trout, Ohtani’s teammate of six years who told reporters he wasn’t aware that Ohtani even had a girlfriend.

“That’s kind of added to the superstardom. There’s this mystery to it all,” Verlander said. “Like, who is this guy? Is he real? OK, well, let me get a glimpse into his life. Wait, you can’t. There’s no glimpse into his life anywhere. This guy is married to the game of baseball — everyone in the world thought that until [recently] when it came out that he’s actually married.”

But for all the walls he has built around his personal life, Ohtani is, by all accounts, very much a team player when it comes to participation in marketing initiatives and social campaigns with both the league and his team. Garden said MLB is working with Ohtani on several content-related projects, though he did not share specifics. In spring training, the Dodgers collaborated with Ohtani to film material for different campaigns like in-stadium video activations.

“Our fans will see the fun side — the very fun side — of Shohei,” Rosen said.

But if recent history is any indicator, the appetite for Ohtani will never be satisfied. If anything, the coverage will only increase now that he’s playing for one of America’s most recognizable sports brands. Not that Ohtani will be affected by the many stakeholders who are counting on him.

“It’s amazing how he handles it,” Rosen said. “He doesn’t get distracted for one moment from what his goal is, which is to be the best player he can and win. This guy really just has it all.”