Shohei Ohtani is coming home as a World Series champion, and demand for tickets to the Dodgers’ season-opening series in Tokyo is fierce.
Want one? The lowest-priced ticket available on StubHub as of Wednesday afternoon: $1,855 for the series opener next week; $1,352 for the second and final game, in both cases including fees. By the time you read this, those tickets might no longer be available.
If you live in Japan, the Dodgers offered a shortcut: Pay $500 to join their new fan club, securing the right to buy two tickets to one of the games.
On the day they signed Ohtani, the Dodgers declared their intention to paint Japan in Dodger blue. On the day they signed Roki Sasaki, they shared their plan for a Dodgers fan club in Japan.
“That is something Premier League and European soccer clubs already do, amassing international fans,” Dodgers president Stan Kasten said then. “We’re doing a pilot program to start that and see how it does.”
For now, the fan club offers four levels of membership. The top level — at about $500 per person, and sold out this year at 1,200 members — offered the chance to buy two tickets to a Tokyo Series game “on a first-come-first-served basis.”
Top level members also got what was billed as an “ultra rare collector’s item” — a ticket with Dodger Stadium dirt from the game in which the Dodgers clinched the National League West championship against the San Diego Padres. Ohtani had three hits in that game, including a double against countryman Yuki Matsui.
The other membership levels cost about $120, $100 and $45 annually. Of the four membership levels, the top three include Ohtani bobblehead dolls and other promotional items, plus discounts on Dodgers fan events in Japan. (Ohtani bobblehead dolls can sell for $100 or more on EBay. On the Dodgers’ website Wednesday, the cheapest ticket to the first Ohtani bobblehead night this season was $132.)
All fan club membership levels include discounts on tickets and merchandise at Dodger Stadium.
A police official announces to fans gathered at Haneda Airport that the Dodgers had arrived at another terminal after they waited hours to greet the team Thursday.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
The Dodgers drive more international sales on StubHub than any other major league team, the company said. Dodgers tickets this year have been bought by fans in 29 countries outside the United States and Canada, the company said, but most often by fans in Japan.
Over the last five years, Ohtani merchandise has accounted for 57% of total Fanatics sales of Major League Baseball merchandise in Japan, Fanatics said. In the one year since the Dodgers signed Ohtani, the company said, its sales of Dodgers merchandise in Japan jumped “more than 2,000%.”
Joel Wolfe, the agent for Sasaki, said he had visited multiple ballparks in Japan with a team store for home team merchandise and a kiosk for Dodgers merchandise.
For the Tokyo Series, although MLB has set up a fan festival in Japan, the Dodgers have put up their own. The World Series championship trophy is on display, as are more than 200 bobbleheads. An area of the exhibition is devoted to Ohtani.
“We’ve done this, really for the first time, only in Japan,” Dodgers vice president Michael Spetner told the Japan Times, “and are bringing the Dodgers here to meet our fans.”
The Dodgers’ Japan fan club is not open to fans outside Japan. The Dodgers do not currently have a fan club for American fans.
