Sadaharu Oh on Unifying Japan Baseball and the Power of Live Stadiums 1 of 3
Key Takeaways:
Record pro attendance in Japan but waning interest among youth and adults. Baseball legend, Sadaharu Oh, established the “Kyushinkai” association which links 100+ bodies to share reform visions to realize fan value.
Coaching must be praise-first and failure-tolerant to widen the pipeline. Stadiums host clinics and pro–am showcases, and Ohtani’s Dodgers example shows how heroes thrive with modern venues.
Live stadium value outperforms screens. Smart expansion and deeper pro–am calendars can drive hometown attendance, amplified by global partners and fan communities.
Article Summary
The agenda by Japan baseball legend, Sadaharu Oh, is to revitalize Japanese baseball. He argues that the sport in Japan’s century-long tradition now suffers from fragmented governance and stale structures despite record professional attendance. Through Kyushinkai (Association for the Heart of Baseball), founded in May 2025, he promotes horizontal ties across professional and amateur organizations, youth coaching reform that emphasizes enjoyment and tolerance for failure, expansion beyond twelve teams, deeper professional–amateur integration, selective technology adoption, and broader Asian linkages. He underscores that television cannot replicate the immediacy of the stadium.
(Note: Article in Japanese language.)
Breaking Walls to Restore Freshness and Scale
Oh contrasts the clear structures in soccer, basketball, and volleyball with baseball’s splintered ecosystem. Professional baseball has remained in a two-league format since 1950, while the wider game is divided among roughly one hundred organizations that span corporate, university, high school, junior high, and youth levels. Kyushinkai proposes a simple operating idea. Share what works, replicate successful initiatives, and create a forum that distributes practice rather than opinion so the entire system gains momentum.
Stadiums are the most visible arena to prove that this sharing works. When a region pilots a development pathway, a coaching approach, or a fan-engagement concept, the ballpark is where residents see and feel the change. Shared calendars, open training sessions, and curated pregame content give supporters repeated chances to experience novelty. Global partners and fan communities can help import formats from abroad and export Japanese successes, which accelerates learning without discarding local identity.
Coaching Culture Shift and a Wider Pipeline
Oh obtained a Baseball Federation of Japan coaching qualification to work with children, and he is direct about the risk he sees. Instruction based only on the coach’s personal experience often turns into habitual scolding, especially for less skilled players, and that drives people away. His proposed remedy is to prioritize enjoyment and to normalize failure as part of learning so more young athletes persist long enough to improve.
Stadiums can operationalize this cultural shift in practical ways. Game-day clinics for children, recognition moments for school teams, and open professional–amateur practice sessions connect instruction to inspiration and make progress visible to families. Oh also reminds readers that a single icon cannot carry the narrative forever. The system needs several heroes at the same time. Ohtani’s example in Los Angeles shows how a modern superstar can mobilize attention across borders, yet the job in Japan is to cultivate the soil for many heroes and to provide venues designed for structured contact with communities.
Live-first Value and Expansion Pathways
Oh argues that television cannot convey the sound of bat meeting ball or the real sensation of a ball entering the crowd, which means the stadium remains baseball’s comparative advantage. To translate that advantage into durable attendance, he supports expansion beyond twelve teams. Sapporo and Sendai are cited as cases where new clubs strengthened regional vitality, and he points to white space in Shikoku, the Japan Sea coast, and Okinawa. Early disparities may appear, yet he expects them to close as teams grow into hometown identities.
Integration across the system is the second pathway he emphasizes. Exhibition games between professionals and amateurs already occur, and he suggests deeper ties so that fans have more reasons to care. Cross-sport learning from soccer and basketball about coaching and match organization, together with more fixtures that include Japan’s regional neighbors such as Korea, Taiwan, and China, would give stadiums fuller calendars and create broader storylines. Global partners and fan bases in Asia and beyond can amplify these efforts, while the anchor remains the in-stadium experience that screens cannot replicate.
Our Perspective: Stadiums turn Oh’s agenda into outcomes
Japan Stadium Partners shares Oh’s conviction that the live ballpark experience is baseball’s greatest strength. We also view the stadium as the place where renewal becomes tangible. At the same time, fans today often experience live and digital together, and when aligned, each enriches the other. The in-stadium moment gains intensity, while digital extends its reach. Our task is to carry forward Oh’s vision by anchoring in the live environment while complementing it with tools that sustain engagement and help nurture the next generation heroes.
In Part 2, we will detail stadium-based economics for expansion, integration, and simple pilots that move the sport from talk to proof while staying faithful to tradition.
(All images in this post are licensed stock images used for illustrative purposes only. Viewer discretion is appreciated.)
