Merging the Kintetsu Buffaloes and restructuring Japanese baseball (2004)

The author’s view

For ORIX the baseball merger was a decision in a field far from its leasing and finance business. Yet the question of how to wind up and rebundle a loss-making operation connects to the thinking it later displayed with Yayoi and Kansai Airports — acquire, tidy, redesign. The refusal to justify costs under the vague heading of advertising expense, and the insistence on asking whether the thing pays as a business, was carried into the peculiar world of professional sport.

How much of what the merger brought to the game can be attributed to one company’s decision needs, on the other hand, to be judged carefully. The survival of the two-league structure and the growth in Pacific League attendance were also the product of each club’s own efforts, the energy of the new entrant, and the support of the fans. As Miyauchi Yoshihiko himself said that the fans had helped him, the merger may have been one starting point of the restructuring, but it does not explain everything that followed.