SKY Perfect JSAT Corp. has bought the overseas broadcast rights to all J.League games in a five-year deal worth 350M yen ($2.9M) annually. The deal reportedly is five times what Japanese football was getting from its previous arrangement with World Sports Group, and covers TV and Internet rights for all games from the top three divisions and the league cup. SKY Perfect, which operates sports channels in Japan as well as Asia's largest fleet of satellites, received 4.4B yen ($36.8M) from the government-backed Cool Japan Fund earlier this month for an 11B yen ($92M) expansion of its int'l "Wakuwaku" channel, which carries J.League games. The channel is already broadcasting in Indonesia and Malaysia, where it has been promoting the J.League by cooperating on arranging friendlies and team tours, in addition to broadcasting games and highlight shows.
BUILDING THE BASE: Cool Japan Fund Exec Dir Kakuya Yoritaka told SBD Global, "In Asia, football is the number one sport, but it's the European leagues that are really popular. Just showing J.League games won't necessarily boost popularity, so they have plans to take Japanese players to the countries and have them do football clinics and other promotion." The plan is to expand the Wakuwaku channel to 22 countries by '20, beginning with Asia, before expanding to the Americas and Europe. Sky Perfect has a close relationship with the J.League through broadcasting its games in Japan to its 3 million subscribers.
Gavin Blair is a writer in Tokyo.
