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China Baseball

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China Baseball
Hi all, I'm a journalist with the China Economic Review (www.chinaeconomicreview.com) working on a story about baseball in China following the MLB exhibition games in Beijing. For context we're trying to get a sense of the popularity of baseball in Japan, the size of the market, particularly numbers like revenues, number of fans, etc.

Sadly I don't read Japanese. Any suggestions for good authoritative sources?

Great site by the way.
Comments
Re: China Baseball
[ Author: westbaystars | Posted: Apr 3, 2008 1:29 PM | YBS Fan ]

Financial information is not even made available in Japanese, so there's not much I can help you with there.

Attendance information for the past three years was mentioned in this recent thread. Popularity rises and falls with how well teams do for the most part. However, the Golden Eagles have shown that moving into a region hungry for baseball will attract fans even with a weak team. This was clear with the Hawks in Kyushu and Fighters in Hokkaido as well, even before they each rose in the ranks to be contenders.

TV ratings is a very difficult one to judge, because the national ratings company doesn't take cable or the various satellite viewership into account. The only thing that can be said is that the Giants' TV viewership is dropping. But that's got a lot to do with how poorly the team is doing. Even though they finished in first last season, they didn't have the perception of being a strong team.

I know that since I got cable TV that I pretty much stopped watching Giants games in favor of games that are shown from start to finish (which Giants games on terrestrial broadcasts are not). I actually watch more baseball than before, but would count as a loss in TV viewership for baseball because I don't watch Giants games. Does that make any sense? Yet that's the news that gets published.

So the simple answer to your questions is that the information you are seeking is not readily available in English or Japanese in any reliable form. That's regrettable, but how it is.

On the other hand, where can I find more information on the CBL? The CBL official site has not put up much information in the way of stats the past several years. Will they start doing so this year? I see that they have a schedule now. Will there be more than just line scores once the season starts next week?
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