It’s already been a sweet life for Fumihide Oda, CEO of Rokkatei, one of the oldest pastry shops in Hokkaido, Japan and the birthplace of the popular Marusei butter sandwich cookies.
This summer, Mr. Oda expects life to get even sweeter. He and his wife, along with two other couples—including his sister and her husband—will take their four children to Oakland, California, to experience, up close, another of Hokkaido’s prized exports: shohei Ohtani.
This is the family’s first trip abroad to see Mr. Ohtani. And it will be the children’s first visit to the United States.
“We decided to go to California now because we want to see Ohtani in a Dodgers jersey!” Mr. Oda, 45, wrote in an email.
In a crazy timeline, the family will open Rokkatei’s first store in Southern California this summer. That gave them a perfect excuse to find a way to get a look at Mr. Ohtani, whose ability to thrive as a star and pitcher led him to sign an outrageous, record-breaking 10-year, $700 million contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers. largest contract in North American sports history.
“We’re very, very excited that it happens to be the same year that Mr. Ohtani will be playing for the Dodgers,” said Mr. Oda, whose grandfather founded Rokkatei under a different name in the 1930s.
As a new baseball season begins after Mr. Ohtani moved from the Los Angeles Angels to the Dodgers this winter, travel stories like Mr. Oda will appear throughout the season. Having been stuck with an irrelevant team for his entire Major League Baseball career, Mr. Ohtani has joined a storied franchise filled with other stars, with the sole focus among them being the team’s eighth World Series title.
Anticipating unprecedented interest in Mr. Ohtani and the Dodgers — especially from Mr. Ohtani’s native Japan — Major League Baseball entered into a multiyear partnership with JTB Corp., the largest travel agency in Japan. To kick things off, JTB has offered international travel packages to the season-opening series between the Dodgers and the San Diego Padres in Seoul, which begins Wednesday. The company plans to release further packages for regular season games in the United States as well.
Catering to very casual fans as well as those who are more passionate, travel packages are expected to include airfare, hotel accommodation, hotel-to-stadium transfers and pre-match tours and merchandising.
“We think this has reached a level where even people who wouldn’t consider going overseas to watch baseball are now interested in actually going to the stadium,” said Kaori Mori, who is part of JTB’s communications and branding team. . “In fact, we regularly send out an email newsletter with information about travel to watch sports, and within two weeks of the news of the MLB partnership, the number of registered members increased by 110 percent.”
From Hideo Nomo, who was a sensation for the Dodgers in the 1990s, to Ichiro Suzuki, a Seattle Mariners icon who is likely to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame next year, players from Japan have repeatedly found success and popularity in the United States. But, according to Ms. Mori, previous stars “received a lot of attention, but this time Ohtani’s popularity is beyond imagination.”
The Ohtani Bump is being felt in the United States, too. On the last day of February, according to ticket resale site SeatGeek, an official MLB partner, the Dodgers’ March 28 home game against St. Louis was the most in-demand game, with an average resale price of $567 per ticket. . That was 38 percent higher than the next most in-demand opener (Cubs at Texas).
“Going from the Angels to the Dodgers, people think, ‘Oh, it’s the same market,’ but the Dodgers are at a different level in tiers of MLB fan sizes, and playing a legacy club at that level of hype is a great combination,” said Chris Leyden, SeatGeek’s director of development marketing. “It’s interesting, because in baseball it tends to be harder to see the impact of an individual player, in part because if he’s not a pitcher he might only get four or five at-bats per game and if he’s a designated hitter maybe it’s four at-bats a game and he doesn’t they play on the field.”
In other sports, such as basketball, Mr. Layden said individual players such as LeBron James and Stephen Curry can dramatically increase ticket prices for a game, sometimes as much as double them. But in baseball, you usually need something historical. Consider Aaron Judge’s pursuit of Roger Maris’ single-season home run record in 2022, which sent the Yankees up 36 percent when he was one homer short.
“We often see that the impact is greater on the road than at home,” Mr Leyden said. “It’s pretty much basic supply and demand. LeBron plays 41 home games, but I only get to see him once in Charlotte.”
With a three- or four-game streak at each stop, baseball enjoys an advantage over other sports in that fans generally have more than one chance to see an opposing star when his team comes to town. For those fans hoping for a personal touch with the Dodgers and Mr. Ohtani this summer, the team’s road schedule presents creative opportunities.
The Oda Group, for example, travels to Auckland in August for strategic reasons. The Dodgers have led the National League in attendance in each of the last 11 seasons, drawing 3.8 million fans in each of the last two seasons.
“Since we will be traveling in a group of 10, we were unable to get good seats at Dodger Stadium,” Mr. Oda said. “So we decided to see him in Oakland because it was easier to get tickets.”
He hopes they will be able to get a close look at Mr. Ohtani, who played for the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters in Japan before leaving for MLB. This shouldn’t be a problem in Oakland, where the stadium is mostly known for its massive amounts of empty seats.
As MLB seeks to increase its reach, both internationally and with younger generations, Mr. Ohtani’s huge popularity could play a huge role.
Osuke Ishiguro, general manager at JTB’s Los Angeles office, said one thing he’s noticed as the company eases summer travel plans is how “many tourists coming from Japan are not just baseball fans, they bring a lot of the kids.” In particular, he said, many grandparents bring their grandchildren, “wanting to show them what baseball can do.”
Mr. Oda said his group’s upcoming trip simply means more to them now, with Mr. Ohtani playing for one of baseball’s most storied franchises, than it would have when he was playing for the Angels.
“We want to see him challenge in a new field,” said Mr. Oda, whose team brings children ages 10, 7, 6 and 4. “We look forward to seeing how the Dodgers bring out Ohtani’s full potential, and we look forward to seeing him push his limits!”
