Destination: Shohei Ohtani

It’s already been a good life for Fumihide Oda, CEO of Rokkateione of the oldest pastry shops in Hokkaido, Japan, and the birthplace of the popular Marusei butter cookies.

This summer, Mr. Oda expects life to become 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 personally experience another of Hokkaido’s valuable 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 serendipitous timing, the family will open Rokkatei’s first store in Southern California this summer. That gave them a perfect excuse to find a way to see Mr. Ohtani, whose ability to thrive as a star hitter and pitcher led to him signing an outrageous and record-breaking contract. 10-year contract worth $700 million with the Los Angeles Dodgers – the largest contract in North American sports history.

“We are very, very excited that it happened the same year that Mr. Ohtani will play for the Dodgers,” said Mr. Oda, whose grandfather founded Rokkatei under a different name in the 1930s.

As a new baseball season dawns after Mr. Ohtani moved from the Los Angeles Angels to the Dodgers this winter, travel stories like Mr. Oda’s will continue to crop up throughout the season. After spending his entire Major League Baseball career with an irrelevant team, Mr. Ohtani has joined a storied franchise chock-full of other stars, whose sole focus among them is winning 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 multi-year partnership with JTB Corp., the largest travel agency in Japan. To get the ball rolling, JTB has offered international travel packages for the season-opening series between the Dodgers and the San Diego Padres in Seoul, which begins Wednesday. The company plans to roll out further packages for regular season games in the United States as well.

The travel packages are aimed at very casual fans, but also at passionate fans. The travel packages are expected to include airfare, hotel accommodations, hotel-to-stadium transportation, pregame tours and merchandising.

“We feel like this has reached a level where even people who wouldn’t have thought about going abroad to watch baseball are now interested in actually going to the stadium,” said Kaori Mori, who is part from JTB’s communications and branding team. “In fact, we send out a regular email newsletter with information about traveling to watch sports, and within two weeks of news of the MLB partnership, the number of registered members increased by 110 percent.”

From Hideo Nomo, who was a pitching sensation for the Dodgers in the 1990s, to Ichiro Suzuki, a Seattle Mariners icon likely to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame next year, players from Japan have repeatedly found success and popularity in the competition. United States. But Ms. Mori said the previous stars “got a lot of attention, but this time Ohtani’s popularity is beyond imagination.”

The Ohtani Bump is also being felt significantly in the United States. According to ticket sales site SeatGeek, an official MLB partner, the Dodgers’ March 28 home opener against St. Louis was the most in-demand opening game on the last day of February, with an average sales price of $567 per ticket. . That was 38 percent higher than the next most in-demand opener (Cubs in Texas).

“When you go from the Angels to the Dodgers, people think, ‘Oh, it’s the same market,’ but the Dodgers are on a different level in terms of MLB fan base sizes, and playing with an old club at that level of hype is a great combination,” says Chris Leyden, director of growth marketing at SeatGeek. “It’s interesting, because in baseball it’s often harder to see the impact of a single player, partly because if they’re not a pitcher, they might only get four or five at-bats per game, and if they’re a designated hitter, it’s maybe four at-bats a game and they’re not playing on the field.

In other sports, such as basketball, Mr. Leyden said individual players such as LeBron James and Stephen Curry can dramatically drive up single-game ticket prices, sometimes even doubling them. But baseball usually requires something historical. Consider Aaron Judge’s pursuit of Roger Maris’ single-season home run record in the American League in 2022, which led to the Yankees’ prices rising 36 percent once he fell one home run short.

“We often see that the impact on the road is greater than at home,” says Leyden. “It’s almost a matter of supply and demand. LeBron plays 41 home games, but I only see him once in Charlotte.”

With a series of three or four games at each stop, baseball has the advantage over other sports because fans generally have more than one chance to see a rival star when his team comes to town. For fans hoping for personal contact with the Dodgers and Mr. Ohtani this summer, the team’s route schedule offers creative possibilities.

For example, the Oda group will travel to Oakland in August for strategic reasons. The Dodgers have led the National League in each of the past 11 seasons, drawing 3.8 million fans in each of the past two seasons.

“Because we will be traveling with a group of 10, we could not 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 can get an up-close look at Mr. Ohtani, who played for the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters in Japan before heading to the MLB. That shouldn’t be a problem in Oakland, which is what the stadium is best known for huge amounts of empty seats.

As the MLB looks to expand its reach, both internationally and among younger generations, Mr. Ohtani’s outsized popularity could play a major role.

Osuke Ishiguro, general manager of JTB’s Los Angeles office, said one thing he has noticed as the company facilitates summer travel plans is that “a lot of tourists from Japan are not only baseball fans, but also bring a lot of tourists with them. of children.” Specifically, he said many grandparents bring their grandchildren “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 illustrious clubs, than would have been the case when he played for the Angels.

“We want to see him challenged in a new area,” said Mr Oda, whose group brings along children aged 10, 7, 6 and 4. “We hope to see the Dodgers unleash Ohtani’s maximum potential and we would love to see him push himself beyond his limits!”