Shohei Ohtani to the Blue Jays; the precedent in Toronto was 'A Bloody Big Deal'
'Showtime' going to T-Dot is of a piece with how sports has gone from chasing championships to "keeping you, the viewer, engaged with the product," as a forthcoming book details.
Oh oh oh Ohtani, I am almost there.
Shohei Ohtani choosing the Blue Jays over the Los Angeles Don’t-cares — ’cause Showtime is coming to Toronto!1 — would illustrate where sports are, for good or for ill. Accepting that, and centering it makes the logic as clear as glass.
It is presumed you do not come to this irregularly updated plea for help, sorry, newsletter, for breaking baseball news. Over the last day or so, though, the clamor of #OhtaniWatch has fomented enough FOMO to coax a Freezing Cold Takes-worthy home-run swing. I’ll say it, at 3:37 p.m. Eastern Time on 8 December 2023: he is ours.2 Or not!
As a diehard Blue Jays fan for nearly 40 years — paraphrasing Roger Ebert, they’re my team; Rogers Communications merely owns them — I am neutral good on the Blue Jays being in on Ohtani. However, the possibility fits with the rise of the global athlete, and the commodities trading that goes with the megadeals, much of which is beyond the ken of creators and consumers of traditional sports media.
In a way, the pitch was tipped by another move by a Toronto spring-summer-fall sport signing that only raised a temporary glow.
Just shy of a decade ago, Toronto FC made a splash signing, hiring striker Jermain Defoe of Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham United fame in January 2014. It came during the short time that Tim Leiweke was the president and CEO of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment. The football club had a cheeky ad tagline, “A Bloody Big Deal,” that depicted all-walks-of-life stereotypical Englishmen and Englishwomen spit-taking upon learning an accomplished footballer was headed to North America. The commercials ran in a continuous loop through the dreary winter months of 2014.
Spoiler alert: it did not take, at least tangible results-wise. Defoe made only 19 starts for TFC over 11 months, although the upshot was that the club upgraded to Jozy Altidore in a “player exchange deal” with Sunderland of England. It got soccer casuals going and created a hook for the franchise as the novelty of Toronto having a first-rank club in a soccer-specific stadium began to wear off. As a pure footy move, it was a push. As an attention economy move, it paid out well, speaking as a caszh soccer watched. And TFC eventually did win the MLS Cup in 2017.
What went less appreciated at the time of “A Bloody Big Deal” were the other elements included in the name of profit maximization and increasing valuation. The transaction bringing Defoe over “also include(d) an agreement between Tottenham Hotspur and Toronto's owners, Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, involving marketing, merchandise and broadcast rights.” That was a precedent for the moving parts that are now involved. Neither Defoe nor Leiweke was long for Toronto, but it was a portent.
And that is where it comes into focus. The best way to regard the sports industry is to remember franchises are a front for branded verticals. The 0.1 percent of the players — LeBron James, Steph Curry, Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce thanks to his relationship with Taylor Swift, to name a few — are a scale model of that. You know this already, and it is un-fun to remember how transactional everything about the whole exercise is.
Major League Baseball, thanks to a lack of national profile and the fact its core audience is Old-Souled, has been late to this party. Ohtani tips the scales since baseball is still a vernacular sport in his native Japan. Japan is a huge potential market for Rogers; Rogers has next to nowhere to grow within its duopoly in Canada; and baseball is likely to be more of a top sports property for Rogers’s platforms when the NHL media rights contract expires after the 2025-26 season.
Rogers’ baseball division also needs a lure for the luxury dollars; it jumped out at me when Shi Davidi wrote a fan has to, “Factor in that the Blue Jays are currently seeking five-year commitments from buyers of their new premium seating – at tens of thousands of dollars per seat, with a two-per-cent bump annually … there is a lot riding on who they add in the coming weeks.” That was written before Juan Soto landed with the New York Yankees. And the Jays need that splash signing after an extremely mid season where they got the last wild-card spot and were swept in the first round.
All that points to the Blue Jays bringing in the Big Shiny Six-Tool Star. It is happening. There is a logic that points to Toronto over Los Angeles. Or so I can be convinced.
It jibes with a forthcoming book by Bruce Schoenfeld entitled Game of Edges: The Analytics Revolution and the Future of Professional Sports (Random House Inc., Aug. 13, 2024). The jacket blurb reminds us of where the business of sports is in the 2020s:
Franchises today are more than just sports; they integrate a whole suite of other businesses—television and digital content, gambling and real estate, fashion and apparel, entertainment, catering and concessions, and much more. But an optimized franchise has no room for error. Teams must do what the numbers say, reducing the element of chance, limiting those random moments of athletic heroism that make sports thrilling to watch. Optimization also means the franchise’s main goal isn’t championships anymore; it’s keeping you, the viewer, engaged with the product .
Ohtani, even if he only appears four to five times per night as the designated hitter in 2024 while he rehabs his flingin’ wing from Tommy John surgery, means capital-E Engagement. There is an entire media corps that follows him to report back to Japan. He is a major media commodity.
Also, he is good at baseball. The only time I will mention batting average is to highlight that he is a lefty power bat unicorn, with a .300-.400-.600 Triple Slash line in his MVP seasons of 2021 and ’23. He might be the most premiere ballplayer ever to walk the earth. And he is coming to Toronto.
Whether the reasons are positive overall for the budget-conscious consumer remains to be seen. It takes us another standard deviation away from the fandom that is not measurable in merch sales, or premium ticket sales.
It is about the bat, too
Or maybe it’s the Mable-ing. Ohtani started using a hard maple bat in 2023, when he hit 44 home runs in fewer than 500 at-bats.
Looking at who stands to benefit, it is clear why Ohtani is joining the Blue Jays instead of either Los Angeles team. Neither cannot compete with Rogers when Rogers remembers, oh yeah, we are a vertically integrated massive corporation. And they can help Ohtani gain maximum valuation. Whether that leads to a third Commissioner’s Trophy is beside the point.
The L.A. Angels are not exactly a serious franchise. Until chairman Arte Moreno sells them, they are in a holding pattern that makes clearing customs at Pearson Airport look like a self-checkout. When did I sense they would not be in the running for Ohtani? Probably in August, when former pitcher C.J. Wilson spilled the tea with The Treadmill Story.
Ohtani is deadly serious about training. Would he really stay with such an apparent El Cheapo franchise?
The Dodgers are in the postseason every October, but they cannot match Rogers and the Jays’, guh phrase alert, level of corporate convergence. The regional sports network that carries their games “has never been available to the majority of households in its service area.” That probably means more people in Canada saw the analyst, so-called, whose case for Ohtani-to-the-Dodgers came down to weather, taxes, and not having to hear two national anthems before every game.
And the Blue Jays also have a clearer runway than almost all 29 U.S.-based teams. One major marketing problem baseball faces in the States rolls around in early August when the front-burner sports become NFL and college football talk. That’s not so much the case here. There is a ton of hockey and basketball talk, but it is restrained until late September.
I want to say so much more. Go on dunking on American baseball media who, during this all, spouted inanities about Canada and the Blue Jays franchises that we have all heard 1,000 times. Weather, taxes, anthems, outdated info about the Dunedin spring training complex that the Jays and local government spent USD$102 million updating in 2020. But that would spoil the mood, and just as Ohtani did before this season, it is all about using the best wood.
That is more than enough for now. Please stay safe, and stay kind.
The Los Angeles Dodgers visit the Rogers Centre in April. Hedging!
What is this “credibility” of which you speak?