Commentary: Agent Nez Balelo ‘wouldn’t do anything different’ with Shohei Ohtani’s $700-million deal

The business of sports often is cloaked in secrecy. You can find out the salary of your favorite player, but how much money his team makes and how much money he makes off the field are the stuff of estimates, not public discourse.

Not on Thursday, though. Is Shohei Ohtani really making more than $100 million this year in endorsements?

Nez Balelo, the agent for Ohtani, did not hesitate.

“Absolutely,” Balelo said at Sportico’s Invest West conference at Intuit Dome.

Balelo is not, shall we say, Scott Boras. He does not embrace public speaking. So we dropped by to hear what Balelo had to say after the first full season of Ohtani’s record-breaking $700-million contract with the Dodgers.

The record did not last long. Juan Soto signed for $765 million with the New York Mets last winter.

And, because Ohtani deferred $680 million and Soto deferred $0, and because a dollar today is worth more than a dollar 10 years from today, the actual value of Soto’s contract is $765 million and the actual value of Ohtani’s contract is $460 million.

Regrets?

“Not at all,” Balelo said. “We wouldn’t do anything different. He won a championship. He went to the right team. Why would we do anything different? No regrets. Nothing.”

Not even about the Angels, the team with which Ohtani chose to play the first six seasons of his major league career. The Angels never posted a winning record with Ohtani, let alone won a championship.

They did, however, stand by their commitment to let Ohtani bloom as a two-way player, even after his first Cactus League season was so rough they fielded questions about whether they would demote him to the minor leagues.

“If we had to do it all over again today, we would have done it exactly the same way,” Balelo said. “We would have chosen the Angels back in the day. It was the right place, with the group and Mike (Scioscia) and the whole team over there. They gave him an opportunity. They stuck with him. He had a tough spring. It was the right home for him at the time.”

“The Dodgers are the right home for him now.”

It was with the Angels — and in particular in 2021, when Ohtani won his first most valuable player award — that he blossomed into what Balelo called a “global superstar.”

However, before the start of his final season with the Angels, Balelo and Ohtani decided there would be no talks about an extension.

“We knew we were going to exercise our rights to go into free agency,” Balelo said.

The Angels opted to try to win with Ohtani in 2023 rather than trade him for a desperately needed infusion of young talent. They were three games out of a playoff spot at the end of July and traded prospects for rental help, then finished 16 games out of a playoff spot.

Balelo would not say exactly how many companies Ohtani endorses but put the number in the “low 20s.”

“It’s not like I’m out there pounding the pavement and soliciting companies,” Balelo said. “After 2021 and 2022, we could have really gone crazy. That’s not who he is. He doesn’t want that.”

He is everywhere in Japan, in advertisements above street crossings and at the airport, on television and in magazines. He endorses shoes and skin care products, airlines and watches and so much more.

“We have to make sure we don’t overexpose him,” Balelo said.

Say what?

“We could probably have 40 or 50 deals,” Balelo said.

That $100 million in endorsement income enabled Ohtani to offer the Dodgers — and other free-agent finalists, including the Angels — the same deal: $700 million, with $680 deferred. The Angels declined. On Thursday, Balelo condemned what he called the “reckless reporting” of Ohtani’s alleged flight to Toronto to sign with the Blue Jays.

The Dodgers took the deal, promising to use the money they would not be spending on Ohtani right away to sign other players.

“They get it,” Balelo said. “They have the vision.”

Within two weeks of signing Ohtani, they had spent more than $450 million on pitchers Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Tyler Glasnow.

“He knew the marketing leg was doing extremely well,” Balelo said. “He knew it was not about the money. It was more about getting with a team that would appreciate him and understand him and allow him to develop as a two-way player.”

With Ohtani coming off his second elbow reconstruction, Balelo said he wondered whether teams might recruit him only as a hitter. As it turned out, he said, none made such an offer.

Balelo said he could have pursued deals of as many as 15 years, and maybe even longer, but Ohtani rejected those overtures. When his contract with the Dodgers expires, he’ll be 39.

“He just didn’t want to have the end of his storybook career tail off,” Balelo said, “and then in Year 13, 14 and 15: ‘Who is this guy? He can’t even run down to first.’”

That raises the possibility that Balelo already has negotiated Ohtani’s last playing contract, even though Ohtani is 30.

Ohtani already has won three MVP awards, all unanimously. He would have won a fourth if not for Aaron Judge breaking the American League home run record in 2022. No one besides Barry Bonds has won more than three.

So Balelo might not be done negotiating on Ohtani’s behalf after all. The Cooperstown marketing deals await but, fortunately for the Dodgers, not any time soon.