The NBA Has Clear Designs On Growing The League In Japan, But Challenges Remain

With the NBA Japan Games 2022 underway this weekend, the NBA has made its first visit in three years to one of its most highly valued Asian markets. And through that return and other endeavors, the league hopes to reinvigorate efforts to further grow both the sport of basketball more broadly, and the NBA itself.

NBA basketball has had a presence in Japan for 34 years, with games and programming having been viewable on television, or more recently the Internet, since the 1988-89 season. But its popularity has never truly broken through to capture a wider, more mainstream appeal in the way it has in some other Asian countries.

According to data from YouGov, for example, a full 63% of people in the Philippines are interested in the NBA, by far the highest percentage of any country outside the United States, and more than double the 30% of interest in Canada, which has had one or more teams in the league since 1995. And at 38%, China has the second-highest level of interest, which in combination with its massive population, has resulted in the country accounting for nearly 10% of the NBA’s total revenue, per Yahoo! Finance.

Compare those two Asian countries to Japan, where according to Central Research Services just a comparatively low 6% of people consider professional basketball to be their favorite sport, and the massive amount of room there is for further growth is thrown into stark relief.

While according to the NBA, 1.6 million fans from Japan follow the NBA’s various social media accounts, that comes out to just over 1% of the country’s total population. Clearly, NBA basketball has gripped the imagination of people in China and the Philippines ways that have yet to manifest as fully in Japan, where baseball and soccer have long dominated the team spectator sports landscape.

Prior to the first of two preseason games between the defending champion Golden State Warriors and homegrown favorite Rui Hachimura’s Washington Wizards, NBA deputy commissioner Mark Tatum and NBA Asia Managing Director Ramez Sheikh held a round table with the media in Tokyo.

In the context of two anecdotes based on my own personal experience having lived in Japan for over 25 years, I asked Tatum and Sheikh about how the NBA hoped to reach a wider, more mainstream audience outside of its more loyal, dedicated fanbase.

The first of these anecdotes is that when I first moved here in 1996, NBA games were fairly easy to catch on regular TV channels, but that over time – especially after Michael Jordan’s retirement – they seemed to disappear altogether. In 2017, the NBA formed a partnership with Rakuten that made the Japanese company the exclusive online distributor of NBA games, which are now only available here as a paid streaming service through the NBA Rakuten app. While the move in this direction may have strengthened the NBA’s more central fanbase, it also raises questions about how it can reach wider audiences.

The second anecdote is that over the past few weeks leading up to the NBA Japan Games I informally polled my adult students in my other job as an English teacher, and not a single one of them was aware that the NBA was coming to Japan at all. Taking these two non-scientific data points together, my question for Tatum and Sheikh centered around the implication that, not only were the majority of Japanese people not getting the news of the NBA’s activities in Japan, but also that without having TV as a delivery medium for that message, the pathway for the NBA to spread its popularity beyond its core fanbase seemed unclear.

In reply to how the NBA can continue its growth in Japan considering these circumstances, Sheikh emphasized three primary areas which the NBA is focused on: continuing and expanding the NBA content they’re delivering through their partnership with Rakuten; promoting the league by bringing more live game experiences to Japan; and creating more participatory NBA experiences such as youth clinics.

“The way we’re approaching it is we bring the NBA to Japan through our media partner Rakuten, and through their streaming service,” Sheikh said. “And as consumption changes, the way media and sport and things continue to evolve and grow.”

Although neither Sheikh or Tatum addressed the broadcast television aspect specifically, the reading-between-the-lines implication clearly seemed to be that the NBA sees its content distribution future in Japan as primarily, if not exclusively, based on streaming media.

But apparently just as important to them as the means of delivery is the content itself. “We’ve developed, and will continue to develop specific franchises of content for our Japanese audiences,” Sheikh explained. “And so for example, we have four series specifically for our Japanese fans… that target different parts of our fanbase, parts of our audience.”

“We recognize that for some fans, it’s not just about the NBA game,” he added. “It’s about fashion, lifestyle, music, sneakers. So how do we tell that story?”

On the point of delivering events to fans, Sheikh said that the NBA is “bringing the live game experience here as well. Not just the NBA experience, the live NBA experience.”

Regarding the current NBA Japan Games specifically, he emphasized that “That’s what this weekend is all about, because half of fandom in Japan especially is through events, through those experiences. And those experiences imprint, and make a level of difference, and we recognize that.”

If that’s the case, then the NBA will have succeeded in imprinting itself on a lot of Japanese fans this weekend, as tickets for both games between the Golden State Warriors and Washington Wizards at Saitama Super Arena sold out, according to Tatum.

When it comes to giving fans chances to participate in events and activities, the NBA’s focus is very much keyed in on the youth. “The third area is participation,” Sheikh explained. “We’ve run a number of experiences and clinics this week, and we’re looking to do more of that now that we’re emerging from the pandemic.”

This makes sense on a number of levels, as youth programs are unquestionably beneficial not only in their own right but also from a PR perspective, and since cultivating interest among children and young adults now should help create a larger and more dedicated fan base in the future.

“Youth is very important to the NBA,” Sheikh said. “In fact, we’ve run many grassroots Junior NBA programs in our other markets across Asia-Pacific. And so we look forward to working with organizations in Japan, building on what we’ve done this week, to focus on youth and growing the game of basketball.”

In addition to the three points Sheikh emphasized, Tatum added a fourth, which could essentially be described as the NBA helping to create and promote more powerful narratives for its Japanese players.

“One of the things that we are going to start focusing on and have to do a better job of is to tell the stories of the local Japanese stars,” Tatum acknowledged. “So that’s why bringing Rui Hachimura back here is important. Telling the story of Yuta Watanabe, who is playing for Brooklyn now.”

The NBA would also like to be more effective in getting the word out about potential Japanese NBA talent that’s still in the pipeline.

“There’s a young man, Akira Jacobs, the youngest player to score in the B.League, who we’ve just signed to play in our NBA Global Academy,” Tatum said. “And we think he has tremendous upside and potential.”

“So I think you’re going to see us do a much better job of telling those localized stories of NBA players from Japan who are having an impact in the league.”

One thing is clear: Now that the NBA has, as Sheikh put it, begun emerging from the coronavirus pandemic, they appear set on ramping up their efforts to grow the league and basketball itself in Japan more than ever before.

How much those efforts will succeed in breaking through to the wider Japanese population remains to be seen, but it seems that the NBA has its clearest plan yet, and with the most logistics in place, to start making deeper inroads, even if it’s an uphill climb.